


Disarray

by Teyke



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cannibalism, F/M, Gen, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Madness, Not canon-compliant past DH1, Plague, Pre-Slash, Rats, Touches of High Chaos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2020-10-06 19:44:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 55,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20512463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teyke/pseuds/Teyke
Summary: “I can never fix what I've done.”“That doesn't excuse you from trying.”Post-Interregnum, Daud stays to work off his debt. Emily struggles to secure her throne. Corvo struggles with something else.





	1. Chapter 1

He'd declared himself ready for what would come. He hadn't expected that to be nothing at all. Corvo was imprisoned in a cell that would never hold him, and then he was gone, leaving Daud to wait and listen for his footsteps. He had to come. Daud held the only key.

Except he didn't. The key was gone. So was his belt-pouch—but that was a later discovery. Upstairs, his chests had been meticulously ransacked. His diary lay open on his bed.

Daud got the message. He turned to his desk, where a different book lay. A travel guide.

Time to find a boat.

  


  


Three nights later he woke from dreamless sleep to the feeling of eyes watching him. Decades of instinct had his sword in his hand and his feet on the ground before he saw the spectre of death crouched on his windowsill. His bones already knew who it would be. Corvo had come to tie up loose ends.

He raised a hand prepare a transversal, but Corvo didn't stop moving when the rest of the world did. Nor did he attack: he merely turned his head, lifted his own hand, and vanished.

Daud landed in front of where he'd been, sword drawn, and leapt up to the sill. Corvo hadn't gone far; he was perched on a crumbling pillar, left hand smoking through the glove he wore now. He hadn't had it when he'd washed up half-poisoned. Perhaps the experience had taught him caution: but given this tableau, unlikely.

Corvo's right hand was empty, raised in a gesture of truce. When Daud paused, Corvo tilted his palm up, and swept his hand east. Toward the Tower, where, according to the latest announcements, little Emily Kaldwin now sat on her mother's throne. An invitation.

Perhaps the poison had turned his brain.

Daud grimaced, looked down at his stocking-clad feet, and grimaced again. Corvo folded in his arms to rest on his knees, apparently content to crouch like an ill-placed gargoyle until Daud made up his mind.

Well. Daud never had been able to abide a mystery.

  


  


They passed over the rooftops, past the unsuspecting eyes of Daud's sentries, down to the river. A boat waited there, with an elderly boatman, who gave them a respectful nod each and asked nothing except, “Ready to go, sirs?”

Corvo gave no verbal answer, nor a returning nod, just made himself a huddled pile of cloth and steel in the stern. Daud looked at him, looked at the boatman, shrugged, and stepped aboard. He sat on the side, trying to keep an eye on both of them.

Corvo was the one noble in the city who would have no need of Daud's services. If that was what was at the end of this trip, Daud was going to be so disappointed.

(Was this what the black-eyed bastard felt like all the time?)

The boat pulled up some distance from the Tower. Corvo's mask tipped upward, and then he was gone. When the boatman made no comment at this display of uncanny power, Daud took his cue and followed Corvo.

It was a familiar route: the one he'd taken on the day he'd killed an empress. Little wonder Corvo had it mapped out. Doubtless it would be crass to wonder aloud if Corvo planned to do anything about the holes in the Tower's security. Perhaps, if Daud survived the night, he'd mention it later. Perhaps not. He'd saved the Empress' daughter from living death... her fate should not still be his concern.

It didn't sound convincing in his head, as they dropped down onto a high balcony. Through the glass doors Daud could see two people; through the Void, he saw four more, but they were sentries at posts facing outward, not poised to break in with swords drawn. Corvo looked at him—or at least, the mask turned in Daud's direction—and then stepped inside.

He would be damned if a child could make him nervous, no matter her mother. Daud followed.

Little Emily had screamed and kicked and bit when they'd taken her, until they'd knocked her out with a lowered dose of sleep poison. It had availed her nothing, save a bruise when Billie slapped her. Spoiled, Daud had thought at the time. Unconquerable, he thought now, as Emily Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles, sat with perfect stony decorum and glared at her mother's killer.

The other person in the room was the Watch Captain, Curnow, standing silently by the door. Older fellow; Daud assessed him in an instant and dismissed him. The girl sitting at the head of the table commanded all attention.

“Daud,” said Emily. She sounded like she was tasting his name and found it bitter. “You killed my mother.” _My mother._ Not, _the Empress. _

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He would not apologize. It would mean nothing, be nothing except an insult. And he'd done too much to this girl already.

“Corvo says you regret it. He says it broke you, and now you're sorry and you want to leave Dunwall and stop being a murderer.”

So Corvo did talk. Daud had been starting to wonder.

Emily's eyes narrowed. “_I_ think that if you were really sorry, you wouldn't want to run away. You'd try to make up for it. That's what Mother always said.”

Empress Jessamine the Just. Too damned kind, too damned trusting—but not, for all that, unwise. When Daud managed to speak, his voice sounded like he'd swallowed a bucket of river-sand. “I can never fix what I've done.”

A trip up-river and a witch imprisoned in the Void were nothing against a world destroyed.

“That doesn't excuse you from trying,” said Emily, with the cold rage of an empress and the naive grief of a child missing her mother.

Daud knew what that did to a child. Very quietly, he asked, “Do you need an assassin, then, Empress?”

Her nose wrinkled. “No. _I'm_ not going to solve my problems by killing people. You have lots of practice being sneaky; you can do something useful with that. Something else. Find out secrets for me.” She stared him down, challenge in those dark eyes. “So? Do you mean it or not?”

Daud bowed his head. He could not do otherwise.


	2. Chapter 2

The empress gave him a shopping list. Dossier requests, some marked more urgent than others: Waverly Boyle, Adele White, the newest Lord Estermont. To be located: Timothy Brisby, Esma Boyle—that one was a true mystery: rumour had her dead at Corvo's hand—Juliet Boyle, Adele White again. The latter list came with short backgrounds. Greater intelligence on all of them undoubtedly existed in the Tower's files, but if such could be relied upon then they wouldn't need him, now would they?

Though, given Burrows' particular obsessions, Daud would bet those files would come out good. Just perhaps not good enough.

Daud bowed and left at Emily's imperious dismissal. A transversal brought him to the stonework above the balcony, and he paused, listening through the door left slightly ajar.

“Would you like me to ring for Callista, Majesty?”

“Yes, please, Captain. In a minute.” Her voice was very small. Such a fragile thing to pin the hopes of an empire upon. Daud touched the list in his pocket. Away from her eyes, it was easier to wonder: was he really going to throw his lot in with this folly? Corvo made an excellent bodyguard and a superb assassin—if, indeed, he'd actually assassinated anyone, which Daud was beginning to doubt—but far more than that was needed to guarantee the life of an empress.

Curnow didn't speak again straight away. Instead he crossed the room to Corvo. If they hadn't both been beside the door, his soft words would never have floated as far as Daud's ears. “You knew I wondered... I'm sorry, Corvo.”

Corvo didn't say anything. Through the wall, Daud saw him tip his head toward Curnow, then the floor. Then he reached out and pulled the door shut, and though he never looked up, the hint was clear enough.

  


  


The Whalers kept files on all their clients and targets. Often the former became the latter, and it always paid to know who might be looking to cheat them or seeking revenge. Daud had never bothered trying to tie the pieces together: he might know whose death would destabilize a business, but he'd never cared for what it might do to an alliance, an economy, an empire. He'd maintained his network of informants and other underworld contacts, and left the nobles to their own tangles. It now felt unforgivably short-sighted.

At least he had a place to start. He wasn't sure how many of his people would follow him. Thomas—Thomas would be loyal to the ends of the earth. Some of the others, who'd always preferred robbery and kidnap jobs to murder, the ones who had the habit of using sleep darts instead of hard bolts on potential witnesses. Others... maybe not. Coin wouldn't be an issue. The empress' death had earned him enough to retire on. He could pay the ones willing to stay.

If any began thinking like Lurk... he'd deal with that if it came.

  


  


He listened to Emily's speech over the loudspeakers as he traversed back to the Tower later that morning. It was short, and offered little to her beleaguered people, or at least not as Daud would have considered it. There were no promises of plague cures or extra elixir rations. But conversations drifting up from the street indicated that her people seemed to take something from the mere sound of her voice: that she was found, that the interregnum was over, that she was remaining in the city and would not abandon them.

“_Burrows betrayed my mother, but worse, he betrayed her people,”_ she declared, and it seemed impossible that she could mean that and equally unlikely that she would say it if she didn't. _“I will undo his work. Dunwall will not fall to his treachery, nor any other's._

“_Burrows tried to eradicate the plague by eradicating our people. He wanted to rule through fear. I will not do so. I do not want you to betray your neighbours, family, and loved ones. I want you to support each other. Help each other. It is only by working together that we will control this plague, and I will see us rise to the challenge.”_

New plague ordinances followed her speech, shocking in their mercy. Crossing Walls of Light would be a fineable offence—because, starting in three days, it would no longer be an immediate death: the Walls were to be reconfigured to stun only, although citizens were warned not to test them. At the recommendation of the Royal Physician, gloves and masks would be issued to all citizens, to be worn at all times in public and disinfected often in boiling water; Daud wondered where she—they, it was of course they—planned to get the cloth. Reports of others ill with sickness would no longer be rewarded, unless they had progressed to weeping. Citizens who believed they were ill were advised to self-report, but offered the carrot of extra elixir rations if they voluntarily self-quarantined in their own homes. The sincerity of such an offer... Emily Kaldwin certainly meant it, but that didn't mean her officers would see it the same way.

Doubtlessly the most severely ill, on the verge of weeping, would still be forcibly quarantined. There were enough things left unsaid in the new measures for a leviathan to swim through the holes. But the announcements followed Lady Emily's promises, and were read by a woman with a kind, soothing voice, and the people, so it seemed, would follow. For now.

Parliament would not treat her so kindly. Daud picked up his pace.

  


  


Later, Daud reflected that he hadn't considered that Parliament would have to face Corvo looming behind the throne as Emily spoke: scarred, grim, gaunt, and looking as lethal as one of Daud's knives. The initial tiresome remarks of praise for Her Majesty and thanksgiving that she was well and returned were considerably more fervent than they might otherwise have been.

When those were out of the way, then protests over the legality of the ordinances were raised. Emily answered with a tricky bit of legal wording, and if her somewhat rehearsed tone revealed that the answer had come prepared from an adviser, it also showed that the young Empress _was _well-advised. That route of questioning was abandoned. Much more vociferous protest came over the content of the ordinances themselves—those announced city-wide, and other changes, such as the new restrictions on stilt-walkers and changes to passport requirements.

Emily rose to the challenge with style. “'Bold measures' had seven months to fix things. It didn't work. They are all my people, and I will save them, if I can.” She stared down the questioner, and if there was any naivete in her at that moment it did not show. “Those were the last words my mother said to Burrows. He disregarded them. I won't.”

Behind her, Corvo shifted, the first movement he'd made since the session began. He might have placed a blade at the speaker's throat, by the way the nobleman hurriedly bowed and declared himself satisfied. Daud knew better, could read in Corvo's posture that his focus wasn't on the speaker at all. But where it was—Daud craned his neck, but although the shadowed gallery gave him an unobstructed view of the floor, he could not tell what had caught Corvo's attention. Emily's words, perhaps...

Galia and Aiden were both watching, as well: two whom he trusted to be amenable to this new, half-official role. Both sent him querying hand-signs that Daud had to wave off in lieu of an answer.

Corvo remained motionless through the rest of the session. An ageing lady inquired about who the new Regent would be, and was met with a pronouncement that there would be none—but the Empress would of course be advised by her Royal Council, her military leaders, and a new Chancellor, after she had time to properly choose the last. Bone so thrown, protests over the lack of a Regent's post fell back and were replaced with a new concern.

“Will Your Majesty not also be seeking the guidance of the Abbey?”

Daud stilled. It could have been pointless prodding, but the nobleman's eyes were focused past the throne.

“They Abbey will have to put itself in order, first, and pick a new High Overseer. Again. One who won't commit treason, this time,” said Emily.

“But, after?”

“I will take guidance from those fit to give it. I suppose the Abbey can find _someone_ like that.”

And how she planned to verify that—was likely going to be Daud's problem, damn it. Corvo had gotten in and out of Holger Square, so it wasn't impossible, but it was more than any of his Whalers had ever done. Those damned music boxes were only the newest and most immediate obstacle.

He couldn't deny that it would be satisfying to pull one over the gold-plated bastards, though.

The session continued. Daud made note of faces and names, and midway through sent Aiden off to search the Claringer estate before that lady could return home. In total the Empress' appearance lasted only three-quarters of an hour, more to show that she was well and of sound mind than to answer questions over the direction of government. It would still be tiring for a young girl not used to so many eyes. Daud stayed longer, until the session was closed by the Speaker, and made sure his people knew who to follow home and eavesdrop on. Then he went to report to Emily—or Corvo, or Geoff Curnow, whoever was really running this small court. He was not yet sure.

The audience was larger, this time, even after the tutor—adviser? Handmaid?—dismissed the other servants from the room. He'd handed over his initial reports earlier, to a silent Corvo. Now he addressed the second-most urgent set of names. “Juliet Boyle is with her aunt, Lydia, at a secondary house, under heavy guard. Waverly Boyle remains at the primary estate.”

“Did she come to session? I didn't see her.” Emily's voice was worn thin with fatigue and stress.

“No, she stayed home, but she didn't proxy her votes to anyone.”

Emily nodded slowly, and looked up at Corvo. “I want to go with you. To see her.”

A flicker of expression crossed Corvo's face, there-and-gone, before he knelt down beside her and took her hand. Emily bit her lip. “I know you worry. And I suppose it should be beneath the dignity of an Empress, to go to her instead of having her summoned. But I don't want—I don't want to bully her.”

It was the Captain who said, gently, “That is the prerogative of an Empress, Majesty. And sometimes the responsibility.”

“Maybe. But not if there's another way.” She looked back at Daud, her voice growing cool again. “Unless something new has been found since this morning's report?”

“No, Majesty.”

“Then I'm going. You'll keep a close eye on her and if I do have to be a bully—then, then I will.”

She settled herself again as Curnow went to the door and spoke quietly to one of his men, and Corvo resumed his customary position behind and to the right of her chair. Callista pressed encouragement on her to eat a few more bites of the tea, and was only successful when Corvo conjured a scone out of her ear and gravely offered it to her, eliciting a giggle.

Daud looked away.

Curnow finished with the orders and returned to the table. “A carriage and escort will be waiting when you are finished, Majesty.”

Emily nodded to him, and then, more imperiously, to Daud. “Continue.”

“No word yet on where Brisby took Esma Boyle, but we've confirmed they got through the road blocks in one piece. Tracking them outside the city will take time. Adele White also attempted to bypass the quarantine and didn't make it. We have evidence that Jack Ramsey arranged her travel. There are some indications that he may have betrayed her, and others, but nothing concrete.”

Emily was white-lipped. “Find evidence and give it to the Captain.”

Daud nodded and continued. It was not a long report; the few hours since the morning briefing could only turn up so many shattering revelations. For all of Emily's evident distress at White's death, a conviction would serve her well; the seizure of Ramsey's estate would serve to keep the Crown afloat for some days more, even if things didn't work out with the Boyles.

Then again, if things didn't work out with the Boyles, their assets, too, would likely end up in Crown hands. Assuming the fallout didn't end the Crown altogether. This plan of theirs could backfire, badly.

When the Empress' carriage left, Daud followed over the rooftops.


	3. Chapter 3

Empress Jessamine's chancellor had been a stodgy, unimaginative woman who had held the position since Her Majesty was younger than Emily was now. Lady Winslow been loyal down to the bone, and had taken ill of food poisoning and died ten days after Burrows claimed the Regency. In truth, the only reason she'd lasted more than a week was that Burrows had tried to hire Daud for the job first, and Daud had simply... not replied. He'd told himself that if the woman had any sense, she'd have seen it coming. The frame job Daud had pulled to account for Corvo's unexpected presence had been barely worth the name.

But then, Rosalind Winslow had never liked the Serkonan Lord Protector, as steeped in tradition and bureaucracy as she was. Perhaps she saw what she wished to see.

Waverly Boyle was far different from Winslow in character, but Emily was neither her mother nor her grandfather, come to power as an adult assured of her position and support. She required someone who would do more than simply keep the Empire running. A mere bureaucrat, no matter how competent, would not suffice.

A bureaucrat would be much safer. Daud could see Corvo's expression as he exited the carriage and took stock of the Boyle Estate, and it was particularly dour, although by the time he turned to hand the Empress down, it was a blank mask once again.

The last time Corvo had been here, he'd worn a different mask. Daud wondered briefly if Waverly would recognize him.

Their entourage had arrived without warning: the prerogative of an Empress. The servants fell over themselves to welcome Emily, not daring to check first with their employer, not with the Lord Protector and a squad of guards there on the doorstep. Daud anticipated which room Emily would be shown to—upstairs, where the real treasures were kept—and arrived ahead of both Emily and the lady of the house, with enough time to check in with the Whaler casing the place and tell him to be certain there would be no opportunity for poison.

Poison, he recalled, was Waverly's preferred method, the one time she'd hired him—nine years ago. Something discreet, much like what took out Winslow. Daud had never found out what that particular young nobleman had done to earn her ire; unlike many of his clients, she'd made no attempt to justify herself. She hadn't haggled and had paid promptly, with no sign of regret.

She showed no sign of regret now, as Emily sat across from her and said, “You funded Burrows.”

“It is the duty of the nobility to support the throne in times of crisis. Burrows was regent.”

“Before that. _Your_ money hired assassins to kill my mother.”

Waverly's surprise looked genuine. It would have to. The falter in her voice sounded unrehearsed. “That's not—no, Esma wouldn't. You must be mistaken.”

“Burrows wrote down everything,” said the Empress, toneless and without mercy.

“Is that why—” Waverly cut herself off, closing her eyes. She stood from her chair and crossed swiftly to the Empress', enough that the two guards reached for their swords. Corvo didn't twitch, which Daud judged a better barometer. Waverly knelt before the Empress and said, “Please. She didn't know, she's never had a head for money. I didn't know. None of us knew.”

Emily considered, and said, “I don't know if I can trust you.”

“Your Majesty—_please—_”

“It doesn't matter. You have money and influence. Everyone says you're very good at running your family's affairs. I need someone like that to be Chancellor. If you want more power—then you can have it, and you don't have to betray anyone to get it, or make your sister do nasty things with a nasty old man.”

“I would never, Your Majesty!” From the way her eyes flashed, Daud thought she might even mean it. The solidarity of the Ladies Boyle might not be a sham, after all.

“Good. And Juliet will come and stay at the Tower with me, and be my lady-in-waiting. I guess that's like a friend. I've never had a friend my age, it will be good practice. And I'm not stupid, I know that—that my advisers want her there because they think it'll make you too scared to betray me, but—I don't think you will. Because if we're good friends, then when we both grow up she can be my Chancellor after you. You'll like that and I'll be able to trust her not to betray me. I'm tired of traitors,” said Emily, and she sounded far too weary for a little girl.

“Your Majesty,” said Waverly, and lowered her head so far that her perfectly coiffed hair brushed the floor.

  


  


The carriage ride back was very quiet. Once back within the shelter of her Tower rooms, protected from eavesdroppers by thick walls and an antechamber, Emily curled herself into Corvo, hiding her tears in his coat.

“I don't want to be a bully,” she mumbled. “I don't. I got mad, I'm sorry.”

Corvo stroked her hair and said nothing.

Daud decided to go make himself useful elsewhere.

  


  


Juliet Boyle was a sickly girl of eight. Emily alternated between doting on her and being disappointed when she didn't want to run and play. Her mother and aunts had kept her secluded all her life, and she was meek as a mouse. If she was to be Chancellor, she had a long ways to go, but right now at least she served her purpose simply by existing—and, with a younger child to show off for, Emily was more inclined to sit still during her lessons.

When she could afford the time for such. Daud knew her tutor fretted that her formal education was suffering for having to learn so fast on the job—that, and a lack of better teachers. Emily was attached and wanted no other tutor, however, so Callista Curnow kept her position.

That, at least, was not Daud's problem, no matter that he got to keep hearing about it at length—or, rather, overhearing. More often than not, he took his orders directly from Emily, although Corvo was always there. Sometimes, Corvo dropped in on him late at night with no words but a list of names. Daud had no formal position and no office at the Tower, but after the first week he was surprised to find that he did have a budget allotted him, and he rented rooms nearby to save on the travel times.

It wasn't tenable long-term, but, like so much of Emily I's little court, it was what could be done for now.

For now, their next major problem was the military: they couldn't tackle the Abbey, couldn't even afford to boot the Overseers off the streets and back to Holger Square, until they had the army and navy under control. But General Tobias had been imprisoned in Coldridge by Havelock for good reason, good enough that Emily was persuaded not to release him. His executive officer had purchased his commission and had never seen the point in gaining rank any other way, and Daud was increasingly inclined to make an accident happen to the man each time he heard of some new delay in the provision of military support to shore up the city watch. The navy, alas, was full of Havelock's friends, and getting supplies in was going to be a real problem soon without that support.

Waverly Boyle had begun cutting deals as fast as she could. Daud thought it would be faster to start cutting throats. When he mentioned as much to Corvo, the man gave him a long look and turned away, as unreadable as ever. But the next time he saw Emily, she said unhappily, “I may have to start being a bully.”

It was Rulfio who came up with the solution.

“Look, I know you've gone off assassinations, but there's no need to rule out sabotage.”

If Rulfio hadn't been saying it to his face, Daud would have been more worried. Rulfio was one of his most experienced men, and one of the coldest. Daud was honestly surprised he'd stuck around... but then, the power of the arcane bond could be addicting. Perhaps he should have expected someone as practised as Rulfio to come up with a compromise.

“The new stills for elixir and remedy are all under direct Crown control. Break the ones at the Garrisons and they'll be dependent on the Crown—they'll fold like wet laundry.”

It had possibilities, but... “They'll have their own mechanics. Stills aren't hard to fix.”

“We could ruin the materials supply,” offered Roberts. Daud shook his head firmly. Emily would not thank him for that, except via Corvo and his folding sword.

“Steal it, then,” said Thomas.

Rulfio looked put out that his idea was sliding toward simple thievery—not that stealing the entire elixir stock for a military garrison was going to be anything like simple.

“We can sabotage the still as well,” said Daud, throwing him a bone. “And pin the whole thing on somebody we don't like.” He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. There was an abundance of people he'd like to get rid of, but fewer of whom it would be believable. Although... “Make it look like army versus navy. They've both got stills. Recruit a couple idiot sailors, dump the stolen goods at the naval stockpile—break the army's still so it looks like bungled theft instead of sabotage, like they were looking to grab spare parts. Break the navy's the same night to explain why they needed them.”

Rulfio was nodding. “I'll get documents forged—you want to pin this on Carruthers?”

“Yeah. He goes to Coldridge, General Matthison is sacked for incompetence... this'll work. Start figuring out the details, but do nothing concrete, yet. I may have more names for you to implicate.”

That, and this was probably the kind of thing he should get imperial permission for.

  


  


Emily stared at him for a long half-minute after he finished laying it out.

“And this is your recommended course of action?” she asked finally.

“We need more men. They have those men.”

“And they're not Overseers,” she said resentfully, and kicked her foot against a chair leg. Looking at her in the moment, it suddenly seemed absurd that Daud was here to ask her permission; she was a child. But it was in her name that it would be done.

And she was not any child. After a moment, she looked up to Corvo, who met her gaze at once—always attentive to his charge. “You agree,” she accused him. “But... I don't want to send them to Coldridge for things they didn't do.”

Ah. Perhaps _this_ was why he was taking orders from a child, if he was so blind that he hadn't seen that coming.

Corvo knelt down beside her, covering one of her gloved hands with his own.

“I don't see how it's different,” Emily protested. “I know, they supported Havelock, and now they're being obstructive, but if I toss them in prison it should be for _that_. And I know I can't right now,” she added, cross.

Corvo kept looking at her, until she looked down, and mumbled, “I know it's different. You shouldn't have been there at all. And I have to do what I can do, not always what I want to do...” She sighed, and scribbled something onto a piece of paper, which Corvo took to the door and handed to the guard outside. Emily looked at Daud. “What I can do may need to be something unfair, or unkind, because the world isn't always fair or kind,” she said, with a sing-song lilt that seemed to indicate she was quoting someone. “But I need to remember what Burrows did, and try to be as fair and kind to as many people as I can, and not take the easy solution over the right one. And I won't always know what's right; I'll have to search my heart.”

Probably the tutor, Daud decided. She was not so old, herself.

Emily narrowed her eyes at him, the lilt dropping to something flatter. “I don't trust you any more than Burrows.”

Fair, Daud thought, and said, “Wise.”

Corvo had returned to her side, and now put one hand on her shoulder, the other drifting to the pocket where he kept his folding sword; Daud tensed, mystified at the sudden reaction, the way Corvo had paled. He chanced a look behind himself—but no one was there, unless the Outsider had for His own amusement chosen to appear to Corvo's eyes alone. Daud wouldn't put it past Him.

“Tell me the plan again,” Emily ordered, and when Daud glanced up he saw Corvo had stepped back, neutral once more. Perhaps it really was the Outsider. A chill ran down Daud's spine. But there was nothing he could do either way, so he resettled his own stance and started talking.

Near the end, he was interrupted by a knock, and then Waverly Boyle slipped into the room.

To her credit, her pause when she saw him was barely perceptible. Then she continued to Emily's side. “Your Majesty, you sent for me?”

“I want your opinion,” Emily said shortly, and gestured at Daud. He pushed down irritation and started over again, this time trying to watch the both of them for their reactions and acutely aware that in doing so, he wasn't well able to watch Corvo.

Waverly nodded as he finished. “It's a tidy solution, Your Majesty.”

“'Neat' solutions often are not.”

“Yes. And to be sure, it would be better in the long run not to resort to such measures—but we are in a crisis. Setting the Walls of Light to stun, keeping the quarantine on your new hospitals, restricting the stilt-walkers... these things mean we need more guards. The Abbey will not be enough, soon, and they have their own problems.”

“Then you think we should do this.”

“If we were not in the middle of a plague, no, but we are. Diplomacy is a slow process, Your Majesty, and we are running out of time. I will keep trying, of course, but they are all stubborn men and short of a cure, it will soon be a choice between this and cutting back some of your new initiatives, or letting them fail. And that would mean more deaths.”

Emily stared at her hands. “Alright. Do it.” She frowned deeper. “The navy—they offered pardons for joining. I'm sure Burrows pardoned some things he shouldn't have. Find some of those sailors, not just... anyone.”

“My Chancellery records will of course be available to you,” said Waverly. Daud gave her a cool look—they would have been anyway—and she did not quite roll her eyes in return. “And the assistance of my clerks. We can call it a general review. More work for them, but—well, we can hire more if needed.”

Ah. That _would_ be useful, actually.

Daud nodded. “I'll keep you in the loop.”

“Do so. It would be unfortunate if someone helpful got rounded up in this scheme.”


	4. Chapter 4

A lack of quarters in the Tower put Daud at a distance, no matter how close his rented rooms. It wasn't until he was spending all hours at the Tower anyway, catnapping in a chair whenever he could catch a few spare minutes from scheming, that he realized that _Corvo_ wasn't sleeping at the Tower, either.

The first night he noticed the lack of Corvo's glowing outline through the walls—always so distinctive—Daud put it down to inevitability. One man could not remain at his charge's side forever without some brief interruption occasionally calling him away. For all that Corvo seemed to ration his speech, he handled as much paperwork as Lady Boyle; Daud had seen more than a few missives cross his desk with Corvo's signature scrawled at the bottom. The Lord Protector must be doing half the job of a regent on top of his own, which wasn't possible without him occasionally leaving Emily's side. That was why, in addition to the Tower guard, two Whalers shadowed Emily at all times—although that probably made Corvo less inclined to leave her, not more.

Too bad. Daud's debt to Emily was a separate thing from his debt to Corvo.

Distracted as Daud was—on top of the stills scheme, his new informant at the at the Abbey reported another round of branding, and Thomas had found evidence that Lord Estermont was angling to lead a third coup—it took Daud a repeat to notice that Corvo was not gone on some brief errand; he was still absent by the time Daud left for the Estate District, hours past midnight.

Interrogation of the Whalers on watch yielded nothing. The Void's vision didn't automatically pass through the arcane bond, and Corvo had proved adept at evading even those Master Assassins who had managed to acquire that skill. It wasn't surprising that they'd not caught him coming or going, but—

“He's supposed to be asleep in his damn room,” Daud growled. “Play peeping tom at the shutters, if you must.”

“He threw Tynan off the wall for doing that,” said Galia. She did not appear impressed by Daud's ire. “Sir, it's going to take more than two of us to have a chance of tailing him.”

Daud jerked his hand down, a short, cutting motion. “I don't want you tailing him, I—”

Except he did, he realized. It didn't matter that Corvo was currently listening to Emily's chatter over breakfast with patient, adoring silence; he'd disappeared from Emily's side for hours last night, leaving her in the care of guards he could have killed blindfolded and the assassins who'd murdered her mother. Daud wanted to know what in the Void could possibly be that important.

“You could just ask him, Master,” said Thomas. It was Thomas' briefing that they were delaying.

Galia sneered at him, a reaction that should have been merited. They didn't trust their clients. It should have worried him that that wasn't at all why Daud dismissed the idea—offering up his life in penance was one thing, trust was something else... and yet—

“He doesn't talk,” said Galia, scornfully.

“He writes,” said Thomas.

“Names, targets, places—hah. You ask me, there's something not all there.”

“He wrote the new security bill that Estermont's frothing about,” said Thomas, which made Daud blink, because he hadn't known that. Thomas noticed and nodded apologetically. “Sorry, sir. I didn't know until today. It's what pushed Estermont over the edge, I think.”

Damn Gristollan pricks. And he really did need to take care of this. “Galia, stay on the girl. I'll deal with Corvo. Dismissed. Thomas, continue.”

Estermont, it was decided, could be dealt with by a visit from Waverly, armed with sufficient evidence to show that the Crown was onto him and would give him only one chance to pull back from the brink. Daud didn't bother to tell her that Thomas' team would be eavesdropping the entire time to ensure she wasn't the one who flipped, although he presumed she was smart enough to guess, or at least not stupid enough to throw her lot in with someone as dumb as Estermont. His voting bloc would be useful if they could secure it, and if not—well, there were always cousins, who'd probably be willing to support the throne and keep troublesome family members under house arrest in exchange for avoiding the shame of having family thrown in Coldridge... and to keep family assets from being seized by the Crown.

It was all a lot more complicated than just poisoning the man. But if they turned to that for all their problems, they'd end up with rebellion sooner or later anyway. Thomas seemed to enjoy this new approach, but he'd always liked over-complicating things.

Waverly provided the list of navy enlisted to be considered acceptable targets, ones who had committed crimes no longer pardoned for service: murderers and rapists, mostly. The Lord Regent had expected military men to be violent, but couldn't abide a thief. Daud passed it to Rulfio, and spent a pair of evenings stalking various naval officers from the crossbeams, winnowing down who he wanted implicated. Then, just to cap it off, they decided to frame the army's third-in-command of taking a bribe to look the other way—a task that became simple when they realized they could skip the frame and just actually bribe him.

Coming up with the funds for the entire project, and keeping them off the books, would have been the hardest part, except that Waverly loaned them her personal accountant. It meant double-checking everything she did, and the woman would probably end up working for them permanently of necessity, but at least they didn't have to do it all from scratch themselves.

Corvo vanished nearly every damn night, and no matter how close Daud kept when he was at the Tower, he never spotted the man going or coming.

He finally caught a moment alone with Corvo at the end of a meeting with Waverly, for which Corvo had been present only to hand over a stack of papers—an analysis of the op from a broader security perspective, requesting some adjustments and certain to create more of a headache for Rulfio, but which was at least tacit approval from the Crown of their final list of targets. Daud excused himself and followed Corvo out, catching his arm the moment the door clicked shut.

“Speaking of wider security concerns,” said Daud, keeping his voice low. “What are you playing at?”

Corvo looked blankly at him—as if he ever looked any other way, these days, even when in company of his Empress.

“I've doubled her guard. I'd have doubled it earlier if you'd told me. That won't save her if you stir up a bloodfly nest.” Daud waited, measuring the impact of these words—a faint tightening at the mouth, perhaps—and added deliberately, “Leaving your empress alone worked out so well for you before.”

That got a reaction. Daud had been ready for a punch, but no: a man of Corvo's talents possessed iron self-control. The only tell he couldn't prevent was the way his eyes went dead, as if Daud had shoved a sword through his heart instead; and then he blinked, and his expression was once more simply flat.

He turned away, and Daud grabbed for his arm, knowing it was stupid, and yet—that look, so swiftly hidden—Daud couldn't—

Corvo stepped into the grab, shoving Daud back as his other hand came up with his sword unfolding. Daud's back hit the wall as the blade kissed his throat. He had a knife up his sleeve, and still barely enough room to transverse away, but there was a fire snapping in Corvo's dark eyes that he'd never seen before, that he'd wanted to see, weeks ago when he taunted the man set to kill him. The man who had never showed. Now, finally, here he was, and Daud wanted—something beyond silent tolerance, grief or blame or rage thrown at him, because he'd never receive absolution and surely at some point this détente would, must, end.

“Sirs?”

Rulfio. He sounded as neutral as Corvo usually looked, which meant he was a hair from doing something lethal—or trying to; Daud wouldn't give him good odds against the Royal Protector. Daud's collision with the wall must have been audible, but he hadn't heard the door open, as focused as he was on the man in front of him.

Corvo was already stepping back and folding away his sword. His other hand was—not quite clutching at his chest. The back of Daud's neck prickled. A moment ago he'd had a sword held to his throat by a man he'd ruined, and that had felt right. Now there was only the same jarring sense of displacement he'd had when first laying eyes on Corvo in the Flooded District.

Then, he'd thought it was his own mind eating at him. Maybe that was still part of it—but not all; there was something very wrong about Corvo Attano, something he'd been blind to only a moment ago...

Corvo did a quick, practised scan, and vanished, his transversal not shuddering the air as much as it used to. He was improving—at least, in his use of the Void. If the other Marked Daud had encountered proved anything, it was that the true challenge was not letting the Void consume you.

Daud's goals had always been selfish and banal, and he'd thought their very mundanity would keep him grounded. Corvo, he'd thought, was so dedicated to Emily that sheer self-abnegation would leave him immune. The prickling at Daud's neck hadn't eased: he was going to have to rethink that.

“Sir,” Rulfio said, very quietly. He was actively scanning around him, too, one of the few Whalers with the Void-gaze to do it. “We've arranged a ship for this op. A day to pull everyone in and we could disappear on it.”

Ah. He'd seen it, too.

“I told you all you were welcome to leave.”

“And you'll go down with the city?”

“If you're not going to leave, then you can get back to work.”

Rulfio saluted and left.

Daud flexed his fingers. If Corvo Attano wasn't going to kill him, then he was going to have to figure out what was wrong with the man—beyond the obvious—and ensure it wouldn't touch the Empress. He owed her—him—both of them—that much.

If Corvo _did_ kill him, well. He could never pay that debt, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

The navy frame-up didn't go without a hitch, but it did finish in spectacular style: a loose whale-oil canister got knocked against the side of the ship and blew a hole that sank the ship and all the pilfered supplies into the polluted waters of the Wrenhaven. Rulfio's crew dived overboard to 'drown', their dupes were swiftly captured, and the men they'd wanted to frame were dragged off to Coldridge. Daud was ordered to eavesdrop upon the Empress' briefing with the Royal Physician and other academy men later that afternoon, and got to spend two hours listening to reasons why the supplies wouldn't be salvageable and how many people would die as a result of the necessary rationing. Sokolov and Joplin, neither of them weak-willed, were subdued in the face of the Empress' disappointment; Daud knew none of it was for them.

When the philosophers had gone, Emily summoned him out from his hidden alcove and asked, “Is there anything you could do?”

If it was lifting the supplies, yes—but supernatural assistance was hardly needed to accomplish that. The problem was the contamination. Elixir brewed from river-soaked supplies would like as not give the plague instead of preventing it. Sokolov wanted to recover them anyway, for use in his experiments, but that wouldn't fix the immediate problem.

Daud could halt time, but he couldn't turn it back and prevent a drunken idiot from failing to secure the oil supply locker, or warn himself that _this_ particular idiot was too much of one to even make for a useful stooge.

“Then what good are you?” Emily asked bitterly, with the spectre of death looming behind her—grim, gaunt, and hollow-eyed. But Corvo did not unfold his sword, and Daud was set loose to go back to shaking the roaches out of military offices.

Outside of the Whalers, the Crown, and Waverly's two overworked Chancellery clerks, everyone else in Dunwall thought it an astonishing display of greed and incompetence on the part of the military; the Tower came off looking like the only sane option, or at least the only one that could guarantee a supply of elixir. The new heads of the army and navy fell swiftly into line and the trials promised to be speedy. Daud spent a minute worrying that the Empress would not be willing to pronounce the sentences, then realized that convincing her to do so was really not his problem, and put it from his mind.

The military falling into line gave an added impact to Waverly's far more subtle negotiations with Estermont—or perhaps that was the number of his recent-made acquaintances that they'd decided to catch in their sweep. His bloc began to splinter. Waverly's allies snapped some up, and government ground on.

Another emergency budget extension was passed, with Waverly Boyle advocating but not fully achieving higher taxes on the nobility, so that the shortfall ended up coming out of her own coffers. Well, she could support it. The military was paid, civilian rations of elixir were largely switched to Piero's Remedy, and the Watch Captain graciously informed Holger Square that their services were much appreciated but no longer required, after Empress Emily publicly remarked that, with military forces now bolstering the Watch, she hoped the Abbey would finally pull itself together.

She put it much more diplomatically than that, of course—that idle comment had spent hours being painstakingly crafted—but the meaning was clear.

The next day, the Overseers were largely off the streets, and Daud's informant missed his check-in.

  


  


His informant in the Abbey was not a Whaler, alas. None of his men could go there undercover: even keeping to the shadows, they were vulnerable to the music boxes, and any long term mission doomed to failure. That had left buying off a third party: either an Overseer, or an infiltrator, and Daud had learned long ago never to trust an Overseer.

The opportunity had arisen, for enough coin. Not the Crown's; for this, Daud used his own, a measure that would provide only meagre security for Emily if word got out that Whalers now wore guard uniforms. Daud had bundled an unmasked, unconscious Overseer onto an outbound whaling ship while an imposter took his place. It was risky, arranging it so quickly—too many things his informant might not know—but he'd not gotten to where he was by failing to grab at opportunities.

Even when he should have.

His inside man hadn't been able to shed much light on the Abbey's turmoil, however. Alliances inside Holger Square were even more tenuous than those outside. Each week had seen another handful marked with the Heretic's Brand, and his informant could only rarely discover the reasons why. In at least one case the evidence had certainly been planted: the one branded had been among the favourites for new High Overseer.

If the Overseers wanted to eat each other, Daud was happy to let them. Even Emily didn't object to that. They had twice betrayed her, and, if she didn't know the full extent of Corvo's heresy, she at least knew that they had betrayed Corvo, too. But sooner or later the Overseers would stop stabbing at each other, and turn the knives outward again... and the Crown had to be ready to meet them, and box them into a role more suitable for men with such a limited view of the world.

And beside that, if his informant had decided to just run out on the job, Daud was going to take it out of the man's skin.

In pursuit of the matter, he wasted a day creeping around Holger Square in person, nauseated and off-balance from the constant screech of the music-boxes. But the place had been a fortress to begin with, and they'd stepped up security even further since the rash of brandings began. In the end he had to turn back or seriously risk discovery, with nothing to show but a migraine that wouldn't fade for hours and a lingering, bloody cough that he had to hide the next day, lest everyone start thinking he had the plague.

The day after that, Aiden burst into Corvo's office—which Daud was borrowing, not having his own—and panted, “Overseer delegation showed up for the audience. Have those damn music boxes going.”

Emily held general court on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, hearing petitioners from across the city. Usually, the lines were long and most petitioners never made it out of the antechamber; Waverly's clerks separated out the ones that could be dealt with by someone else. A delegation from the Abbey couldn't, and would no doubt jump the queue.

And Corvo would be standing right behind the Empress.

Who couldn't simply refuse to see them, not when they'd come for the general audience; that snub was too risky by far. If she even realized what the true threat was—

“Tell the Empress she needs to cut it short, but stay calm. Act like a guard or a messenger.”

“We can't get near!”

How many music boxes had the bastards brought? “Then find Waverly—or Carter or Ramskin,” Daud barked, and stepped into the corridor, barely glancing around before twisting himself through a series of transversals that took him near to the audience chamber—too near; he reeled and nearly fell off the crossbeam as the screeching chord hit him. There was an Overseer with a box marching up and down the corridor, and guards still too used to Burrows did not dare to try to stop them. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who'd disappeared into the bowels of the Abbey.

He wasted precious time balancing there, fighting for control of his limbs, and then he was up on his feet, not running, not to avoid being heard—as if anyone could hear him over that racket—but because he'd pitch himself headfirst off the beams if he tried. The ache in his chest, not fully gone away, flared up again.

He managed to get to the main hall in time for the doors to open and the Overseer delegation to march through. None had been made to surrender their weapons—scant weeks ago, they'd practically been part of the Tower Guard. Daud sank to a crouch on unsteady legs, fumbling with his wristbow—too slow, too slow: on either side of the procession was a Void-damned music box, aimed straight at the throne.

Sight caught up to him: Corvo was standing behind Emily's throne, as ever, perfectly unmoved.

Daud blinked and wiped sweat from his eyes, but—no, he'd not mis-seen. Was Corvo really not affected? Perhaps. The Mark differed between each of its bearers. Even within the Whalers, some gained more or less Void-granted power, and most of them were rendered far more useless in the face of the music boxes than Daud found himself even now. It was—possible. Daud squinted, struggling to make his eyes focus. Corvo was hard enough to read even when his vision wasn't wavering.

The Overseers marched inexorably closer to the throne. Daud aimed his wristbow at the back of the nearest one's head and fished out a canister of baffle-dust. He had three of these: potentially enough to cover his tracks if he had to kill a number of Overseers in front of witnesses. Assuming Corvo didn't take it as an attack on the Empress and kill him first, but Daud supposed that would at least be good for a cover-up.

The Empress was saying something, Daud thought—he couldn't hear and couldn't focus enough to lipread. Evidently this occurred to her as well, because a moment later she spoke again, her little-girl's voice loud and piercing enough to be heard over the din.

“Turn those things off!”

The Overseer in the lead made some response, at first barely audible, until he increased his volume to a shout. “—dark forces, Your Majesty, which may seek to—”

“Don't be stupid! Turn them off at once. I won't hear from someone who is shouting at me.”

Corvo should have moved by now, a grim reminder to any who dared gainsay the throne. He might as well have been a statue. Emily took one glance at him and gestured instead to the regular guards in the room, who, with a clear directive from the Empress, advanced upon the Overseers.

Daud blinked away sweat, again. If swords were drawn—

But the leader of the delegation seemed to know he was beaten; he turned to his own men, and the boxes finally stopped.

In the silence left behind, Daud's ears rang. He missed the start of the discussion entirely, struggling to breathe without taking great, heaving gasps that would reveal his position. There was still a music-box going in the antechamber, but thick doors muffled the effect. Daud managed to tune back in as it fell silent, orders belatedly received.

“—no, I don't like them. They're ugly and the noise is ugly,” Emily was saying. “And if they really worked to 'prevent confusion' then you'd have a new High Overseer by now.”

“Your Majesty, you are young. You don't realize the insidious nature of true evil—”

Ah. Daud understood now why this Overseer had come to the Tower with the Abbey still in disarray: he was an idiot.

“Evil killed _my mother!_” Emily shouted, jumping to her feet. “How dare you tell me I don't know what it is! How dare you pretend to me! Campbell was one of the traitors, and Martin after him! And they both drank and smoke and swore and lied, and locked me in a room, and Campbell hit me, and he made the ladies at the Golden Cat cry and bleed, and then he laughed about it! Your stupid music boxes did nothing. They were as useless as you are. Get out of my sight!”

Something was definitely wrong with Corvo, that he wasn't down the steps of the dais and between his charge and the Overseers. He hadn't moved at all. But the Tower Guard was stepping forward, eager to fulfil their Empress' will as she stood there, blazing with righteous fury. The hall was awash in murmurs and more than a few titters, to see the corruption of the Abbey so thoroughly chastised; the Overseers were forced into retreat.

Amidst it, Emily turned to her Lord Protector and said something too quiet to overhear. Finally, finally Corvo moved, inclining his head to look at her. She nodded decisively, and announced to the court, “This audience is adjourned.” Her voice was strained.

She had too much composure to start crying immediately, Daud thought, but her lower lip was trembling.

Too late to do any damned good, Galia entered from a side-door. She must have been waiting just out of range. The new uniforms they'd procured didn't quite match the Tower Guard, but the regular soldiers knew the extra eyes on Emily by now, and made no objection to her approach. A hiss, and Tynan appeared on the rafters not far from where Daud crouched. Aiden must still have been searching for someone who could end the audience prematurely.

Galia hesitated as she approached to within arm's reach of the Lord Protector and his charge, but Emily didn't. She marched down the dais toward the same side-door, and Galia did a smooth reversal on the spot, going ahead to ensure the way was clear. Corvo turned, moving slowly.

Trying not to stagger, Daud realized.

A pair of precisely aimed transversals let Daud appear on the ground behind a screen, just out of sight, even if he nearly bowled over Quinn in the process. Keeping his head ducked away from the audience, he strode forward and grabbed Corvo, dragging him the last few steps out and slamming the door shut just as Corvo's knees gave out and he sank down, coughing helplessly. Blood splattered against the dark blue of his sleeve, in enough quantity that he might have been vomiting it. When Corvo tried to breathe in, Daud could hear the way his breath bubbled.

Fuck. Not immune, just too damn good at hiding it.

“Corvo?” Emily gasped.

“Get her to her chambers,” Daud barked, and Galia obeyed at once, picking Emily up—she didn't fight, allowed herself to be carried away. “Clear this corridor!” He dug out a vial of elixir, popped the cap and shoved it at Corvo, then had to hold the man up long enough for Corvo to swallow it. Corvo doubled over again, blood splattering the floor from his coughs—elixir had remarkable effects on Daud, and hopefully on other Marked, but it wouldn't remove fluid from the lungs, even if it sealed the wounds.

The corridor was clearing, Galia having taken Emily's regular Guards with her and the rest fleeing any signs of the plague. Daud signalled Tynan to remain on watch, then eyed Corvo—his coughs were growing weaker, but not, Daud thought, due to the elixir; rather, lack of oxygen was finally winning out over that formidable will. Fuck. Daud forced another elixir down his throat, downed a vial of remedy himself to kill his headache, and flexed the bond to call Rinaldo to his side.

He appeared in a flash of light, swiftly sliding into combat stance, then dropping it when he saw the situation. “Shit. What happened, sir?”

“Overseer's Void-damned music,” said Daud, taking a firmer grip on Corvo's shoulder to prevent him from falling over entirely. “He's drowning in his own blood.”

Rinaldo crouched, peering into Corvo's face—or trying to—and then glancing at the blood on the floor. “He's coughing, that's good. You gave him elixir? Okay.” Coughing was now more like 'wheezing'. Rinaldo dug into his kit and came up with a small jar, from which he scooped a pea-sized lump of greenish paste. “Put this under your tongue, Lord Protector. Don't swallow it. Ah, here—don't bite me.”

Corvo suffered his assistance, while Daud eyed the jar. “Did I know you had that?”

“No,” Rinaldo said cheerfully, as Corvo renewed his coughing fit with a frenetic energy that had him shuddering like a leaf in a gale.

Well, at least it was probably safe where it was; Rinaldo had never been shy about threatening to knife anyone who dared try steal from his supplies. Although usually he went for a hand or a leg, whereas an unwise use of this drug, if Daud had identified it rightly, would stop a heart stone dead. That was the only use Daud had ever had for it. “We don't do assassinations any more.”

“I'm not trying to murder the Lord Protector, sir.”

Corvo chose this moment to switch from coughing to vomiting blood all over the floor. Daud grimaced in disgust. “Because you're not trying, you're succeeding?”

Rinaldo gave him an exasperated look.

In another few minutes, however, Corvo's breathing was much better, the coughing beginning to taper off. The shaking hadn't, but then, it wouldn't, not until he had time to sleep off the drug. Rinaldo fed him another vial of elixir, and then together they hoisted him up to his feet.

“He'll be coughing for a while. Elixir will keep off pneumonia. Sokolov might have something else to help.”

Sokolov had undoubtedly been sent for, to check over the Empress. Corvo's rooms adjoined hers; best to take him there. Daud ordered Tynan to get the mess here cleared up—ignoring the disgusted look on his face—and they transversed away.

When they got to the Lord Protector's suite, Daud left Rinaldo to fuss over Corvo and strode to the connecting door to the Empress' rooms. There was also a secret passage connecting the two suites, but there was no point in revealing he knew of its existence. A quick glance through the Void showed the familiar outlines of Callista Curnow, her uncle, and—surprisingly—sickly little Juliet Boyle with her nursemaid, all except the very last fussing over Her Majesty. A pair of guards was at each entrance, with Galia lurking above one and Quinn covering the balcony. Well enough, for now.

Daud turned the handle and walked in, in time to catch Juliet's impassioned declaration that, “I'm not leaving! You've brought me soup whenever I'm sick, I won't—”

“Dear, this isn't like your episodes,” tried the nursemaid.

“It's not plague,” said Daud, announcing himself to the room. This needed to be nipped in the bud. Half-remembered medical terms floated to mind as he cast about for a suitable lie. “It's a consumptive fit. A leftover from Coldridge.”

Half the room jumped at his sudden appearance. “You're sure?” asked Curnow-the-elder.

“He drives himself hard enough, he was going to suffer a relapse sooner or later. No fever, sneezing, glassy eyes, or confusion—it's not plague. Sokolov will confirm it—I assume he's been sent for?”

The Captain nodded, losing ten years with relief.

“But I don't feel well,” said Emily. Her voice was rough.

“You're fretting and you had to deal with stupid men saying terrible things,” Callista consoled her.

“Then can I see him?” Emily asked—worn enough that she forgot to make it a command.

Daud nodded, stepping aside, and Emily scrambled off of the bed and ran past him. “One other,” he warned the rest, before following. Better to limit the circus.

It was Callista who won that argument, catching up with Daud as he stood with one eye on the door and one on the Empress hugging her Lord Protector—still twitchy from the drug, and therefore still capable of sitting upright. He hugged her back, one-armed, then gently pushed her away so he could cough into an already-stained handkerchief.

“If you're wrong, he'll kill you before the end,” Callista said, low and tense.

“I'm not. You should ensure that the rest of the Tower knows it, swiftly.”

She frowned at him, but stepped back out of the room, trading places with her uncle. A moment later he could hear Juliet Boyle peppering her with questions, which Callista answered calmly. Good.

Emily tearfully refused to leave, even—especially—after Corvo fell asleep in his chair, drug-fuelled energy abandoning him. She clung to his hand worriedly, while Rinaldo kept hold of his other arm, fingers resting lightly over the pulse-point on his wrist: too easy for this kind of crash to drop to something worse, but there was nothing to be gained by telling the Empress that. In sleep Corvo's expression was no longer subservient to years of training, and the marks of hardship were plain to see, the grim lines of his face softening into something infinitely sadder.

It took the better part of an hour for Sokolov to arrive from Kaldwin's Bridge. Stupid, to have the Royal Physician based so far from the Tower, but then, they couldn't risk keeping his labs _in_ the Tower, either. Which did not mean they shouldn't be moved to a more reasonable distance. Sokolov had flatly refused to be budged, however; and as the entire Tower knew by now how much he disliked Corvo, Emily had been just as happy to have him remain further away. Not a situation Daud could or wanted to disturb. He had enough headaches without getting in the middle of that tangle.

Standing watch over the Empress and Lord Protector gave Daud plenty of time to think through the flaws that were within his power to correct. Aiden should have gone straight to Corvo when he'd learned of the boxes, not wasted time telling Daud first; or should have gotten the regular guard to remove Emily, fabricate some emergency. While the Tower Guard accepted the Whalers as some kind of auxiliaries, they didn't have proper ways of working together. He had to change that. When the masks were off, his Whalers needed some kind of proper rank.

And where in the Void was Waverly, anyway? Daud wrote out a short note affirming Corvo's plague-free state and pointing out how badly her absence might be taken, then summoned a novice to take it.

Captain Curnow, he noted, stifled an oath at the sudden appearance of a nondescript young man in blacks, and again at the novice's transversal away. When Daud turned to him, however, the Captain just held up his hands and said nothing. Emily, curled up in a chair by Corvo, didn't even notice.

When Sokolov did show up, he had Joplin in tow. Corvo woke up for the miserable honour of being examined by two of the brightest minds of the Empire, and made himself difficult with his (reasonable, Daud thought) total refusal to undress, so that by the time Waverly finally arrived with a train of attendants behind her, he almost managed an actual expression of relief at the interruption. Rinaldo vanished, Daud hid behind a screen, and Sokolov and Joplin loudly declared both Empress and Royal Protector plague-free. Corvo's bedroom turned into an impromptu salon as they began holding forth on the progress they were making with a cure—until Callista pointed out that the Empress had fallen asleep in her chair. The circus was ushered out, for the most part, while Callista and Corvo gently woke Emily. Corvo looked on the verge of passing out again himself.

“Oh,” Emily said sleepily, and rubbed at her eyes, looking guilty when her hands came back smeared with kohl.

“It's all right, Majesty—audiences are over,” soothed Callista. “Let's get you cleaned up, and you can have a nap in your own bed before tea.”

“Alright, Callista,” Emily murmured. Corvo gave her another hug, and she leaned in to whisper something in his ear. He made no reply that Daud could discern, but Emily nodded and said, “Get better, won't you, Corvo?—Good.”

She let herself be led away. Waverly bowed as she went past, murmuring, “I'm glad you'll both be well, Majesty,” which earned only a regal, tired nod.

Daud stepped closer to Waverly, and asked quietly, “Did you think you could save yourself if you stayed away?”

“No. Juliet was here.” She eyed him coldly. “I was ensuring no fallout with the Abbey. The last thing we need is them finding a common enemy in the Crown.”

Daud said nothing.

She looked at the door to Emily's room. “She seems unusually tired.”

“Nightmares.” From the reports he received, she rarely slept the night through: and Corvo was not there to comfort her. But then, she'd never asked for him.

“To be expected, I suppose. Juliet has them—a man dressed as death comes to steal away her mother. But she mentions them less than she used to. Now it is happy chatter about how brave the Empress is, how clever.”

“As far as I know, your sister lives. If you really want me to get results from outside of Dunwall, I need the quarantine down.”

“We all want an end to the plague,” said Waverly, and although this was the woman who'd doubled her family's wealth selling rat-lights, Daud found himself believing it. Nothing like a good stare into the face of death to instil virtue—or so Daud had heard.

The door clicked open—not the one to Emily's room, but from the main corridor—and Joplin stepped back into the room, blinking behind his glasses as he saw the two of them standing there. “Oh. Er.” He looked over to where Corvo was slumped over, eyes closed. “I see he's asleep... I wanted to speak with him while he was here, examine his equipment.” Waverly's eyebrows shot up, a wicked light gleaming in her eyes before she masked it again, while Joplin wandered over, wringing his hands. “I don't suppose, he wouldn't mind if I took a quick look now. I did make all of it. And he hasn't brought it to me for weeks. I need to check the integrity is holding up. Some of my best work, but very experimental, very touchy...”

Waverly rolled her eyes and abandoned the room with the last of her attendants, leaving Daud alone to consider what to do with the philosopher going through the pockets of Corvo's greatcoat. Since Joplin was able to do so without getting a blade through the throat, Corvo must have indeed fallen unconscious. Daud should probably have thrown Joplin out and called Rinaldo back in—but he confessed to some curiosity when it came to the man behind Corvo's strange mask, and that sword.

The mask, unearthed, was a horror: but not so much of one without the man behind it. It looked oddly defanged in Joplin's hands, and ludicrous when Joplin traded out his spectacles to hold it up to his face. He fiddled with something on the side of it and remarked, to no one in particular, that he was content with how its remarkable construction had held up. In the well-lit room, it did not seem so well-constructed as all that, except to inspire intimidation—but while it might provide some protection against a glancing blow, the mouth was barely held together by wire, and the whole thing was rather... ramshackle.

Without removing the mask, Joplin fished the sword from Corvo's coat, and brought it over into the sunlight streaming through the window to carefully unfold and inspect it. Gleaming, polished—it was impossible to see the joins between the segments, as solid a proof of Joplin's craftsmanship as the mask was not. The one time Daud had had that sword in his hands, he'd thrown it away too quickly to really inspect it, and while he didn't regret that, he now found himself curious.

“Forming out of pieces like that—it'd break against any other sword.” But Corvo had to know that, so why...?

“Indeed it would be so, were this any ordinary metal,” said Joplin, turning the blade to sight down along it. “Or, if I may humbly say, were it forged by any other craftsman. Certain processes, however, may grant metal the ability to reform as required. You can see, there is no seam.”

Joplin pulled the mask from his face and offered it to Daud, motioning impatiently for him to put it on. Dubious, Daud did so, and found his view distorted—he looked up, about to remove the mask, and as the view moved with him he realized that it wasn't distortion, but extreme magnification: when Joplin held the sword in front of him, he could see the whole flawless length of it. Muffled sound reached his ears, and Daud turned his head up to Joplin's face—one enormous eye barely fit in his view—and jerked back as Joplin's voice boomed: “A marvellous creation, is it not?”

Daud pulled off the mask partway through the sentence, and found that Joplin was speaking quite softly. Intriguing. Magnification of both sight _and _sound... if it held up over distance, Corvo might well be able to eavesdrop from outside the range of Daud's own Void-given gaze. Damn. He wanted one.

“The processes devour any imperfections and make it so such never existed.” Joplin was still talking about the sword. “If the Empire manages not to fall into the sea, it will still be another three hundred sixty years before it is equalled, and men will have moved on from swords by then. But not knives.”

All the hair on the back of Daud's neck stood up.

The Power wearing Joplin's body turned to him. “You dreamed of catching the blade in your hand and holding him back. In truth, it would have sliced through glove and flesh and then into your neck. Its edge will never need sharpening. Piero thinks the mask was his greatest creation, but the sword is its equal. And neither so great as this.”

Against his will, Daud's eyes slid away when the Outsider reached toward Corvo. He had seen the Void and not lost his mind, but it took a wrenching effort to force himself to look back. The Outsider stood with one hand not-quite cupped in front of Corvo's chest, hovering perhaps two or three inches away. Corvo twitched in his sleep—how he had not woken up and bolted, screaming, Daud didn't know—and the Outsider smiled, then slipped his hand inside Corvo's coat, briefly, before withdrawing to smooth the heavy fabric down flat against Corvo's chest.

“His dreams are much more fragmented than yours,” said the Outsider. “Fascinating. I thought his role was soon to end, but all the futures of your Isles continue to dance around him. I don't think you'll have those three hundred sixty years, Daud.”

Daud at last found his voice. “You also said my story was almost over.”

“I did,” the Outsider admitted easily. “Countless humans I've watched, and I still didn't see this coming. Dear Corvo. All his dreams are clear to me, yet all his choices are opaque. Such delightful unpredictability.”

He looked up at Daud. “And now your story might end tomorrow or in ten years. Either way—I'm sure it will be—”

'Fascinating,' Daud mouthed—it should have been along with Him—but instead it was at Piero Joplin, who snatched his hand away from Corvo and stared at it, bewildered.

“Er,” Joplin stammered. “What was I... my apologies, I seem to have gotten lost in thought. I'm most pleased to say, everything is holding up very well. It is my finest work...”

He wandered to the door in a daze, and after a couple attempts realized he needed to open it before he could go through it. The man needed a keeper—anyone would. Poor bastard. Daud pulled at the bond, a quick tug to summon any available novice, and instructed of the man who appeared, “Make sure he gets back to Sokolov, and doesn't say anything stupid.” He considered a moment. “Babysit him, don't kill him.”

The novice saluted, and followed Joplin's meandering path down the hall.

Daud looked to Corvo, grimacing in his sleep. Speaking of poor bastards. He tugged at the bond again, and Rinaldo reappeared, looking wary until he saw the room had emptied, upon which realization he immediately went over and did a quick assessment of Corvo.

For himself, Daud had had quite enough. “Keep guard on him, don't interfere with him, and don't let him throw you out any windows.”

“It's not going to be possible to do all three,” Rinaldo said wryly. “I'll tuck him into bed, but he'll be up sometime—tonight, tomorrow morning.”

“When he can look after himself again, let him.”

“Worried, sir?”

Daud knew his expression was sour. It wasn't worry, not exactly. For all of this to fall apart would be—frustrating. Exhausting, pointless. Augh. “Just do it, Rinaldo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to give credit for the concept of a particular scene here from the absolutely amazing [Much Abides](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4082584) by [intentandinvention](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentandinvention). If you've read that fic it it'll be obvious which, if you've not read it then you _really really should_ because it is _wonderful_.


	6. Chapter 6

True to form, Corvo was up by late evening, and vanished around midnight, losing Rinaldo before they even got outside the grounds of the Tower. The Outsider might consider Corvo unpredictable, but in some things he was entirely so.

In frustration, Daud tossed Corvo's rooms, then got irritated with himself and righted everything. The myriad reports on Corvo's side-table might have been of interest—and the man had a proper office; he didn't need to be taking the blasted things to bed—ah, but Daud had murdered his former bed-partner; did he expect Corvo to move on?

For such an opulent suite, Corvo had only one small shelf that looked at all personal, with small knickknacks that must have come from Emily—a seashell, a handful of black feathers, a collection of childish drawings. Daud put them all hastily back.

There were no bone charms, no diary or other incriminating documents. He hadn't expected any.

Daud cursed himself, and went off to bed.

Corvo was back by morning, to be fussed over by both Emily and the usually-shy Juliet, according to Galia's bored report. Certainly he seemed fully recovered by the time Daud saw him that afternoon at the Empress' meeting with the most important members of the Commerce Guild. A ten-year-old Empress did not actually have anything to discuss with the Guild: that fell to Waverly. The Empress was there to watch, and learn, and lend an air of imperial attention. Daud was there to rifle through offices while their owners were occupied.

Before he split off to do just that, he saw at least one noble attempting to draw some sort of response out of Corvo—all he was getting was flatness of increasing intensity. Corvo was clean-shaven, sharply dressed, and showed no sign that he'd been out until nearly dawn. It made Daud wonder if he had a bone charm to stave off sleep. He couldn't see that ending any way other than a massacre.

The Commerce Guild were all second-tier snakes, the first-rate cutthroats having vanished at the start of the plague, or gotten themselves killed off since. Daud and his team copied several interesting documents, Waverly seemed particularly pleased with herself, and the Empress was likely bored near to tears. So they all lurched on forward, toward the next crisis.

That was, perhaps, an overly dour view of the next project to come to Daud's attention: managing a closer working relationship with the Tower Guard without killing them. Rulfio, in particular, was put out—he'd avoided working with them so far and was out of joint mostly over the realization that the Whalers were, in fact, going legit—had gone legit, and that Daud intended to stay until the bitter end, be that tomorrow or in ten years.

Daud had half-expected to wake up and find Rulfio gone, or creeping up with a knife, but instead Rulfio took to taking out his frustrations on the others, challenging them one-on-two in fights that probably would have resulted in more broken bones if an unimpressed Rinaldo hadn't started appointing himself referee.

“Outsider's eyes,” groaned Tynan on the third day, “Why is it _us_ you're beating up?”

Which—

Combat between Whalers—and other Marked—was a thing of flashing shadows and rapid transversals. If they had to fight in public then they needed to be used to going without, unless all else would be lost. And training together was one of the easiest ways to build rapport. Daud put a word in with Curnow, who had a word with Alexander Ramskin—Captain of the Tower Guard—and shortly thereafter most of the Whalers found themselves in extra morning practice.

Daud was exempt: the Knife of Dunwall could not be officially employed by the Tower. He found himself a high perch and watched, instead, noting performances and wincing. This wasn't what his Whalers were used to, it wasn't what an assassin's skills were suited for, and their own instincts betrayed them as they struggled to avoid using their powers. Results were embarrassing.

He tasked Thomas with figuring out some way of evening the scales, if only so the Guard didn't lose all respect for the 'irregulars'. Thomas, himself nursing a swollen nose from that morning, swiftly began drawing up plans to ambush sentries in the dark and call it a drill. At least he could trust Thomas to have enough sense to inform Ramskin first.

Come the new week, Daud found himself summoned to court: the first trials of the framed navy men were nearly concluded, and the Empress wanted him to witness the sentencing.

She sat pale upon her throne, dressed all in white, as the clerk read out the findings and recommendations of the lower court. Death, in most cases. Hard labour, in some. The latter she approved; the former, she commuted, to join their fellows—without hope of parole for ten years. No man would last that long.

“More death serves no one but the rats,” said the Empress, and if any dared think her soft, she disabused them: “You've contributed enough to them already. I'll have you serve the Empire instead, as you swore to: to your dying breath.”

Daud wondered what he should take from that. Guilt? A warning? If he felt shame it was that the job had been bungled in any fashion; and he knew well enough how easily Corvo could put a blade through his neck.

(And if it bit at him, late at night, when he woke gasping from nightmares of his sword through Corvo's chest—and why should those be so much more disturbing than the ones where he was the one impaled?—no one knew. Daud slept poorly; the Empress slept poorly; and Corvo Attano probably did too, if he slept at all. Par, for playthings of the Outsider.)

  


  


Thomas, it seemed, was developing a head for politics: he decided to get the Empress on-side in his mock invasion. Daud looked at him in horror, until Thomas explained that he'd pitched it as being pirates vs sea-monsters from the deep, which would certainly capture the Empress' imagination, and hopefully wake no memories better left undisturbed. No Whaler masks would be present. In fact, Thomas explained with relish, he was thinking of making it two competing clans of sea-monsters—one of Whalers, one of picked members of the Tower Guard, just so that they could really show up the latter.

Daud left him making increasingly elaborate scenarios. If Emily decided she wanted to be a mermaid Empress instead of a pirate queen, Thomas was just going to have to deal with it himself.

Corvo stalked into his office later that day, slammed down a folder of information in front of Daud, and left. Since Corvo usually came and went like a ghost, Daud supposed that was as close to an expression of annoyance as he was going to get. He picked up the top document—ah. Concern over unrest at the slaughterhouses. Ramsey hadn't met any of the union's wishes when he'd taken over. Abigail Aimes had died in a very public, very gruesome 'accident', which had subdued the strikers for a time, but there was only so far you could push people and now the troubles were bubbling up again. From a security perspective, the continuity of the oil supply had to be ensured; from a humanitarian one, the Empress was appalled by the conditions described by the workers who'd petitioned her.

It promised to be a headache, with any real solution needing to come from Waverly; Daud's job would be to keep the mess contained and, probably, smack Ramsey's hand. Well, that part would be satisfying. He wouldn't mind taking a few fingers—they'd not been able to prove Ramsey's complicity in Adele White's death, and that loose end had been nagging at him.

He took the papers with him when he went to observe the next joint training session. It was, once again, painful. At least Rulfio was managing a respectable enough showing.

Galia appeared on his rooftop with a puff of air. “Her Majesty wants to watch.”

“Ah.” Daud stepped forward, out of long habit falling into the same sweeping assessment that Galia was performing. Plenty of trained men and women below, with too many weapons to hand—he absently checked his wristbow. No explosives left about that he could see, but the armoury lockers weren't far away. No unexpected faces in the crowd.

The Empress appeared with less ceremony than befitted her station, running out the doors with Corvo in her shadow, as ever. She reached the edge of the platform leading to the yard, as a lieutenant shouted a halt to drills, and then there was a flurry of bowing and scraping while the rest of her companions caught up—no Callista, today, but little Juliet and her nurse—no wonder Emily wanted to get outside.

All the attention had Emily quickly composing herself into something regal. “Thank you all for your service,” she said formally—and then was a little girl again, as she turned to the lieutenant and asked, “Can I watch? Will that be too distracting? I want to see the sword fights! Corvo says they're all very good.”

If Corvo had said anything, much less that, Daud would volunteer to play the mermaid king. But her voice was very audible and it made the fighters down below happy, and the Empress happier still when the lieutenant ordered drills to resume.

Emily would have been happier with a sword in hand herself, but her attempt at suggesting such—to an appalled look that the lieutenant couldn't quite hide—was forestalled by a glance at Corvo. “Later,” Daud heard her decide. Then—“Why don't you take a turn, Corvo? I remember you used to practice three-on-one! Mother—said it was one of your favourite things.”

The hitch in her voice was nearly unnoticeable.

Daud put it from his mind, watching Corvo instead—who had to be making the same calculations that Daud was, that he'd doubtless made before allowing Emily into the yard—twenty armed men and women, any of which could be a traitor; two Whalers by the doors, another on the roof with the Knife of Dunwall beside her, the armoury nearby. Having gone through the man's pockets, Daud knew well enough that Corvo carried his own armoury around with him—but being better-armed was no replacement for being too far from his charge.

“Please, Corvo?” Emily asked, soft enough that it barely carried up to Daud, even crouching almost directly above them as he was.

Corvo folded. He touched her shoulder in a brief gesture and turned for the rack of wooden practice swords. The lieutenant—looking startled and then honoured—joined him, asking questions that Corvo didn't answer, but Emily, bounding along after him, did. Below, Tynan moved away from the doors, into arm's reach of the Empress.

Corvo picked a practice blade, rolling it around in a lazy circle and loosening his shoulders. “How many could you fight at once?” Emily burbled. “You've had more practice now, right? Six? No! Your lungs, you were ill so recently. Not six. Or five. Four—if you're sure...”

Another of those brief shoulder-touches, and Corvo vaulted the railing, landing in the rapidly-clearing middle of the courtyard. Daud found himself watching as eagerly as any of the fighters below as the lieutenant beckoned forward two of his men, and Rulfio stepped forward, signalling Jacob to take the fourth place beside him.

Heh. They were making it easier for him: unused to fighting the same target together, odds were the Guard and the Whalers would get in each others' ways. Exactly the kind of joint training they needed, though.

“Your Majesty, do you wish to give the command?” the lieutenant asked.

The Empress would. She was nearly bouncing with excitement. “Begin!”

Corvo lunged—left, as Rulfio came at him from that direction, the most aggressive of the four by far. Corvo met him with a twisting block that shifted Rulfio off-balance, and followed it up by kicking out his knee and tapping him on the neck—a kill point. Then Corvo was past him, and no longer surrounded. Daud saw Jacob raise his hand and remember in time not to transverse; Corvo saw it, too, and took advantage of the distraction, and then it was all violence and quick movement, over far too soon and leaving Corvo in the centre, untouched.

“Match goes to the Lord Protector!” called the lieutenant, over Emily and Juliet's cheers and the somewhat startled applause from the audience. “Would you care for a second match, my lord?”

Corvo looked to Emily, who said, “Oh, please, Corvo! That was amazing!” and shortly there were another five stepping forward.

Five was enough to give Corvo some trouble, at least, drawing things out so that Daud had time to appreciate the show. He considered himself a good swordsman, certainly good enough to take on any of his Whalers, but he'd been an assassin a long time and Marked nearly as long; his style was brutal and efficient and good enough. Corvo was brutal and efficient and also beautiful, possessing the kind of martial grace that could not be taught, only honed over a lifetime of practice.

He was also cheating. Not obviously—he didn't transverse or stop time; his every movement was plausible. But he was fast, uncannily so, and tireless, so that it was Daud's two Whalers who were the last of the five standing this time, only their equally unnatural endurance allowing them to last that long.

And then it was over and Daud found himself itching to try his own hand, not just sword versus sword but magic against magic. If he froze time they could duel right now, in the space between moments while everyone looked on and no one saw—ah, but he didn't want it to be a crude practice blade in Corvo's hand. A master of his craft deserved a weapon that was his equal.

And then, finally, Daud would know—

—What? Which of them the Outsider favoured? Daud caught himself; the Outsider could claim He didn't play favourites all He liked, but Daud knew better and had no desire to steal that honour from Corvo. And if he wound up with Corvo's blade at his throat and Corvo let him walk away, he would learn nothing new; if he proved himself superior, it still wouldn't matter, not when Corvo had gone through Rudshore like a ghost and stolen Daud's key as easily as he might have left a knife in his back. There was nothing to be proven or learned, here.

But the thought followed him all the rest of the day, long after Corvo left the ring to escort the Empress to her lessons, and Daud went off to supervise far more shadowy dealings. He stayed late at the Tower even after he'd finished checking on all the crises in motion, leaning out over a higher parapet than the one he'd been watching from this morning, the world at his feet—and so far beyond his fingertips.

He didn't see Corvo's silhouette leave his chambers below. Nor did he see him arrive. He only looked up and saw Corvo there: masked and with bare blade waiting.

Daud's blood sang more sweetly than it had in twenty years.

He drew, and Corvo was nearly on him before his blade finished clearing its sheath; Daud transversed away and Corvo followed, his transversals decent but not _as_ good, _as _practised. That was an advantage Daud sorely needed, because Corvo was a sight to behold with a practice sword but he was poetry in motion with Joplin's folding blade singing through the night air. There was no need to hold back, now, no need to stay humanly slow; Corvo chased him the length of the roof as Daud transversed behind him again and again, and each time found Corvo already turning to meet him.

Daud threw a tether to yank him off-balance, and Corvo retaliated with a blast of wind that sent him flying off the rooftop, dragging Corvo with him. He halted time to transverse back up, Corvo the only falling thing in a colourless night, and then Corvo was gone with a _wuff_ of air, reappearing so close that Daud threw a canister of baffle-dust without even thinking. Corvo's turn to halt time, now, and they were both gone before it exploded, crashing back into each other in a whirling, lethal dance.

Either one of them could have killed every other soldier at today's practice, singly or altogether, but Daud didn't know if he could win this duel, except that he knew he no longer wanted to lose it.

Which of them drew first blood, he couldn't say; he thought he'd tagged Corvo once or twice, shallow scratches that had taken all his skill to land, and Corvo's blade was too razor-sharp to feel, not with this much adrenaline rushing through his blood. They engaged, disengaged—Corvo kept his pistol holstered but nearly got Daud in the leg with a crossbow bolt. Time resumed, paused, resumed again, and paused once more, cutting off a shout of, “What was that?” Their clash of blades had made enough noise to be noticed.

But here, in the stolen moments, it was only the two of them that mattered.

Sound returned along with time, as Corvo turned effortlessly into the same block he'd used against Rulfio that morning. Daud transversed rather than suffer a dislocated knee, and instead found himself twisting out of the way of a bolt that hissed across the outside of his bicep. He had no time to check if it had managed to cut through the armoured weave; Corvo was on him again, form perfect with every strike. It took only one mistake, one block angled too far out, and Corvo was inside his guard, blade thrusting forward—coming almost to a stop, but he jerked forward at the last moment, as if he couldn't quite make himself pull it all the way. Daud's fingers were as nerveless as if he'd been run through, instead of stuck with barely an inch of steel. The mask of death leered at him.

Corvo recoiled and vanished.

A doubled hiss of air: Thomas and Roberts appeared beside him, blades drawn. Roberts was reloading her wristbow. “Sir,” said Thomas, worried, frantic. “I can't see where he went.”

“I got him, but I doubt that'll slow him down long—”

“You shot him,” said Daud, incredulous. He hadn't heard, hadn't seen—well, neither had Corvo, if he'd let himself get shot.

“Not quite in time,” said Roberts, poking grimly at a darker patch on Daud's coat, fussing, while Thomas stooped to pick up Daud's sword, still nervously surveying the area.

“I'd have sworn the Empress wouldn't order this,” said Thomas, and he actually sounded upset. “Is it just him—we could take her with us—”

“Outsider's eyes,” Daud barked. “It was just a spar.”

They both paused, staring at him—then looking to each other.

Roberts poked the wound hard enough to make Daud wince, and gave him a sceptical look. “You're bleeding like a stuck hound. Drink some elixir before you ruin your coat.”

The coat had survived Rudshore, Overseers, sewers, river krusts, and the odd explosion. Daud rolled his eyes as he fished out a vial, glaring at them both as he drank it down. “This was a match, not a duel. Damn it—don't kidnap the Empress, don't shoot anyone else, and don't fucking go anywhere until I make sure you haven't killed the Lord Protector.” He transversed away before they could voice any more protests.

Corvo's suite was close—if they'd gone further for this fight, the Empress' guard wouldn't have been around to fuck it up. But Corvo wasn't there. Daud went to his office, next, in its less-used wing of the Tower, and found Corvo there, in shirt-sleeves. There was a bloodied bolt lying on his desk, beside an empty vial of elixir. Next to these, the mask glared ominously up at Daud. Hm. How much of that conversation might Corvo have heard?

“Sorry,” Daud offered, although Corvo must have already realized it hadn't been his idea and that he'd dealt with it, or surely Corvo would have reacted more violently to his presence. Instead he only tossed a brief glance in Daud's direction before turning back to the small wardrobe he kept in here. The back of his shirt was one large bloodstain—Corvo must have done at least as much damage pulling the bolt out as it had going in. Roberts had good aim, if not good enough to try a head-shot. The hole in the shirt was over the right shoulder—no wonder he'd slipped.

He pulled the bloody shirt off and, straight away, a fresh one over his head, although the blood on him was still wet. Even that quick change revealed enough to suggest why he might be reluctant to bare skin; suggested it was surprising that he'd let Daud remain in the room at all. Daud looked away as Corvo laced up the new shirt.

It wasn't as if he hadn't seen the marks left behind by torture before. Corvo had all his limbs, all his fingers, both eyes and ears, his nose—that made him lucky, as far as Daud could tell. Aside from a few minor burn scars across his jaw, his face had been left alone; Burrows must have wanted his head in good condition when he mounted it on a pole.

Perhaps he had cut out Corvo's tongue. Daud found he didn't care to find out.

Corvo had tossed his coat and waistcoat over the top of a chair. As a peace offering, Daud offered, “Leave those with me. Less gossip among the Whalers than the servants.” At Corvo's glance, he amended, “Less chance the gossip will spread outside them. They'll be talking about this anyway.”

A waistcoat from the wardrobe hid the bloodstains on his new shirt; another of his long overcoats, a darker shade of blue than the old, went on over it. Corvo stepped past Daud, snatched up and pocketed the mask, then rummaged swiftly through the damaged coat, removing a myriad of things—how many grenades did one man _need,_ honestly—and tucking them away with such practised speed that Daud didn't even see them all. When done, he slung his weapons belts on again, and there he was, the Empress' grim spectre once more. He didn't look at Daud as he left.

Daud chose to take it as acceptance. He went through the coat pockets out of habit if not principle, found nothing, and bundled up the ruined garments: he fully planned to make them Thomas' and Roberts' problem. Time to get back to damage control. He could only hope the Empress hadn't already heard of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I were doing chapter titles, this one would be 'I subsist on fight scenes in lieu of sex'


	7. Chapter 7

Daud's hope of the gossip avoiding the Empress seemed in vain the next morning, when he woke to a touch at his shoulder from Julian, another of the night-guard. From the slant of the wintry light filtering around the shutters, it was barely past dawn—the Empress would be at breakfast. Damn it. He'd wanted to gauge her mood first, before deciding whether to mention the incident. He couldn't see Corvo saying anything—one way or another. Maybe this was some fresh disaster. He scrubbed a hand over his face and asked, “What, then?”

“The Lord Protector is missing,” said Julian, and Daud came instantly and fully awake.

Five minutes later he was standing in the Empress' suite, along with Thomas. The servants had been dismissed to the lower halls, to remain there until questioned. Callista had gone only with protest, and Daud imagined that even now she was running to fetch her uncle. He'd sent Roberts after her, both to keep an eye out and ensure the Captain arrived safely.

The Empress sat alone at her little table, where she sat every morning—the only meal that she ate with her Lord Protector at her side, instead of standing at her shoulder. This was their time together as more than Lord Protector and Empress; Daud couldn't imagine Corvo missing it for anything short of the most dire emergency, and even then he'd have sent word. A note. _Something. _

He was not in his rooms. He was not in his office. So far as they could determine, he was not in the Tower at all—and while he left nearly every damn night, he had always before been back by dawn.

“Juliet is in her rooms,” said Thomas. “Lady Boyle hasn't yet arrived from her estate.”

“Bring the girl here—don't alarm her. Then find”—he racked his mind to recall who would be keeping an eye on the Chancellor at present—“Garcia, make sure there's nothing from that quarter.” Julian had already been dispatched to check in with every Whaler on duty and alert those who weren't, but that would require some time.

And if this was one of his own people, the betrayal he'd been half-braced for—

Immediate orders given, Daud turned to the Empress.

She was very pale, in her white morning-wear, and her eyes were very cold. Her hair was longer now, beginning to grow out of its child's bob, and Daud could only be glad she had no taste for black.

“We'll find him,” Daud said, for lack of anything else to say. He'd already asked her about anywhere else Corvo might have gone, but her only suggestion had been the Hound Pits Pub, where the Loyalists had sheltered. Daud had dispatched a Whaler at once. But it was hardly likely Corvo had been going back there every night—he had to have other haunts.

The Empress had not been pleased to learn of Corvo's nightly disappearances. It wasn't only that he had strayed from the Tower, but that she hadn't known. She was developing a properly noble possessiveness, Daud thought sourly.

“You and he fought last night.”

Who in the Void had told her... “We sparred.”

“He was shot.”

“A misunderstanding. I checked, he was fine.”

“If you're going to kill me, too, I wish you'd just do it.” Her voice was very small. Too small for an Empress.

“I'm not,” Daud said roughly. “When I last saw him he was alive and well”—and had anyone seen him after that? Damn it—“and you will be, too, when you see him next.”

He couldn't promise the other way around, not when Corvo might already be dead—it seemed impossible for a man who'd already survived so much, but Dunwall's horrors only ended where the sea's began. In truth promising to find him at all was a mistake, when so many things might happen to render a body unidentifiable. But at the least he could do all in his power to try to fulfil these promises.

He wondered, if he stood in front of a shrine right now, if the Outsider would appear to laugh at him.

The morning moved like molasses as Daud remained with the Empress, awaiting news. Juliet Boyle was deposited in the room, and sat silently at the table with Emily, sneaking glances at the Empress and Daud whenever she thought they weren't looking. Captain Curnow appeared with his niece and Roberts in tow, and had to have the situation explained to him. When he heard of Corvo's nightly wandering, he cursed Corvo for a fool. Captain Ramskin finished interrogating the servants and returned to report nothing usable—he _had _known of Corvo's disappearing acts, as it turned out, enough that he'd increased the nightly guard, but he hadn't known either the frequency or how to ask the Lord Protector what in the Void he was doing. He also knew who Daud was on sight, although this was their first meeting. Daud filed that tidbit away for some other time.

He'd had a Whaler eavesdropping on Ramskin's interrogations, of course, but she only tipped Daud a nod as the captain left. There really was nothing.

Julian came back with no unusual reports; Thomas, with the news that Waverly was occupied with her morning business and seemed unaware of anything amiss at the Tower. So far, they had contained the situation. That wouldn't last: half the servants knew something was wrong, and the number would only grow by the hour.

The search expanded outward. Daud ate lunch sitting on the roof directly above the Empress' apartments, eyes aching from the continuous use of the Void. He hated body-guard duty, even with a client as cooperative as the Empress. Especially with the Empress. But if Corvo hadn't fallen afoul of mischance, then Daud was perhaps the only man in Dunwall who could hope to stand in his place.

The Abbey was in too much disarray to make Corvo vanish, unless he'd been caught inside it. Delilah was dealt with. Vera Moray still lurked in the city, roaming the Distillery District openly these days; Daud would have to track her down, and pray for luck in getting anything sensible out of her. He doubted Corvo would have crossed her on purpose, but her erstwhile apprentice Morris Sullivan was the one person Daud had been able to confirm killed by Corvo in the mask, and however long ago they had parted ways, it might have angered her.

He'd have to make sure he packed enough grenades for that conversation. It wasn't one he could send a subordinate to—he'd have to go himself, and leave the Empress vulnerable, damn it.

But first there was this afternoon to get through.

The Empress made that easier by claiming a headache and cancelling her afternoon appointments, and harder by instead watching Daud with eagle-sharp eyes as he did a much more thorough search of Corvo's rooms and papers. There were enough of the latter that it was going to require days to read them fully; for now Daud just kept an eye out for anything obvious and instead focused on finding any possible secret compartments. That, at least, was something the Empress took to, so that after a while she stopped staring at him in favour of knocking on the floorboards, while Callista hovered.

There was nothing. They took apart the bookcases, the desk, the bed and the bedframe, and while there were secret compartments aplenty, all were empty, and dusty enough to have been so for some time. They dismantled his wardrobe—repetitive and utilitarian—and moved every hanging and rug, shifted every picture. Daud struggled not to wince as he lifted the Empress' portrait and left fingerprints on the frame, and then again when he saw there was nothing behind it. Nothing, and in his office, more nothing. If Corvo had left any clues, they were buried among his paperwork. If.

Waverly arrived during tea, which Emily refused to eat, her face drawn enough that she probably did have a headache, now. As soon as Waverly saw the Empress she prickled like a cat, all on high alert, but she had the good sense to wait for the door to close before she stepped forward and asked, “Your Majesty, what troubles you?”

If she hadn't yet heard, then they'd done a better job keeping it contained than Daud had thought. Perhaps Waverly had just come to see if the Empress was ill. She listened without comment to the explanation that followed, her eyes lingering on Daud. Suspicion ran both ways, then—not that she was anywhere near the top of Daud's list. Anyone with enough money could get their hands on poison, but Corvo had vanished from the Tower, at least, by himself. Probably.

“You must increase the guard,” Waverly said when the explanations were finished: they did not take long. “And, Daud, you will need your agents at Parliament tomorrow—this will bring all the rats back up from the sewers.”

“My people are searching the city.”

“Your Empress is vulnerable, and everyone will see it tomorrow.”

“I can cancel the speech,” said Emily. “Or delay it.”

Waverly was shaking her head. “Majesty, rumours that you are ill eclipsed any mention of Lord Attano today. If you do not appear tomorrow then they will have you struck down with plague, and in any case you cannot avoid all public appearances indefinitely. You must show you are strong without him.”

Emily's face crumpled; Waverly froze, apparently as adrift with what to do with a tearful child as Daud. He'd seen crying children before—seen this child crying, before—but they'd never been his problem, even when by rights they were his responsibility. The Empress was both.

She mastered herself before more than a few tears could escape, and blotted her face with a tea-napkin. “I will be strong. I am Empress.” She sniffed, as the adults in the room exhaled in relief. “If we need to increase the guard—we can tell people now, and get the City Watch to search, too.”

“It may be better to wait until we can see all reactions at once,” Waverly cautioned. And there were other reasons why it might not be advisable to have the Watch search for Corvo, but—

“Only if we can keep it quiet that long,” said Daud. “Which we can't. Shifts will change at dinner, guards and servants will go home—keeping this quiet another full day is impossible.”

“I see. Yes, better to announce it on our own terms... we will need to craft this message very carefully. I can arrange for some particular nobles to hear it by messenger, if you'd care to have some men watching.”

“I would.”

“Then...” Waverly looked to the Empress, and if she did not know what to do with a child she at least managed to show some gentleness as she said, “You must have someone standing behind you, tomorrow.”

“Corvo didn't always stand behind Mother,” Emily said mulishly.

“Your mother was an adult. She didn't need to be so concerned with projecting her strength—everyone already believed in it.”

Such a fragile fiction to unite an Empire.

“Then you will do it,” said Emily.

Waverly looked taken aback. “I'm no swordswoman.”

“But no one doubts you're strong.”

“They do doubt my loyalty.”

“Well, Daud can't do it!”

Into the silence that followed this mild outburst, Daud suggested, “Captain Curnow might fill in.”

“He has no political clout,” said Waverly.

“And he's a passable swordsman at best, but he's survived three regime changes and the plague. He's a stable figure and everyone knows it.”

“The ones who bother to know who he is—Fine. I suppose he's at least a neutral choice.”

“He won't like it,” said Emily. “But I guess—he can do it.”

“I'll have a messenger sent to him as well,” said Waverly.

They spent the rest of the meal hashing out exactly what the announcement would say, and who would need to be watched closest, while the uneaten food grew cold on the table. They finished with a plan that was hurried and rough, and Waverly begged an hour to go to her offices and set things in motion, promising to return in the evening to help the Empress prepare for the morrow's ordeal. Daud walked her to the door, giving Callista the chance to step in and encourage Emily to eat, offering what comfort she could.

Idly, low enough that the guard in the hallway wouldn't hear, Waverly said, “You looked displeased, arguing for expanding the search past your own men.” Bait and trap: it told him nothing of her opinion on that fact. Daud considered what good might come of trying to play her—but he'd never been a politician.

“If you betray her, I won't stop with one sister.”

“And you have such _loyalty_, to perform the search yourself.” She was full of scorn and fearless, or doing a damn good imitation thereof.

Let her think what she would. Daud needed to make his own plans. This was the first job he'd taken in decades without an exit strategy—and now he needed one, because if it _was_ Waverly, or if enough nobles judged the time right, or if Corvo was discovered with the Mark bared and it all came crashing down, then his responsibility to Emily remained, Empress or no.

At least he knew that if they had to run with her, Thomas wouldn't object. Others might. Too bad for them.

Daud gave Waverly an ironic bow, and turned away to find paper and ink for his own missives.


	8. Chapter 8

Aiden woke him again in the early hours of the morning. It was even earlier, this time, long before dawn, perhaps an hour or two after he'd settled down to nap in a chair in Corvo's room—the one they'd managed to get most of the stuffing back into. The thought of taking the man's bed was repellent, no matter how much he'd told himself to be practical. He'd only meant to nap for an hour or two before returning to reading through Corvo's documents, anyway.

Vivian was standing next to Aiden, looking windswept and far too full of energy, bouncing on her toes. Youth. Daud glowered at them both. “Tell me you found him.”

“Yes, sir. At the Margrave Hospice.”

Dunwall's largest hospital for the worst of the plague-struck: a hastily-converted asylum, equipped with cells secure enough to hold the weepers they sent there to die. Fuck. _Fuck_. Daud stared at the wall. He hadn't really thought—hadn't really expected it. Not Corvo...

Outsider's fucking eyes. He had to tell the Empress. He had not the faintest idea how.

“Ah, not Attano, sir,” Vivian clarified. “Lensman.”

Oh. His missing Abbey informant.

Daud rolled his eyes upward, bit back the first three comments that came to mind, and asked, “Is he coherent?”

  


  


Looking at the tell-tale brown marks staining the face of 'Alfred Lensman', Daud considered that he might have done the original Brother Alfred a favour by dumping him in a cargo container and shipping him out of Gristol. At least at sea there were fewer plague rats and fewer weepers. Though if the sailors who found him took him for a voluntary stowaway, he might yet end up with a set of broken legs to match his replacement's.

“Daud,” Lensman said, squinting. It made pink fluid well up in his eyes. “That you?”

“Yeah.” His voice came out muffled. He might risk having Lensman brought onto Tower grounds—the still-broken water lock made for an excellent impromptu holding area—but he wasn't stupid enough to face a near-Weeper mask-less.

“You owe me.” Lensman pulled down his cloth mask to spit a gob of bloody phlegm to one side. “I never revealed you, even when those bastards started cutting bits off. Lied like the damn Outsider Himself, I did, even when they broke my legs and tossed me to the rats...”

As admitting to any association with the infamously heretical Knife of Dunwall would only have netted Lensman further torture, keeping his mouth would have been in his own self-interest anyway. Nonetheless, he had... something of a point. Daud didn't want the Abbey looking at him; they didn't know about his arrangement with the Crown, and he wanted it to stay that way. And Lensman had held to their deal. That was worth enough consideration for Daud to hear him out.

“What do you want?”

“Everybody knows you got powers. Grant 'em to your followers. Why you needed me, eh? They say your people don't get sick. I want it. I'll join you for real, if that's what it takes.” He coughed, harsh and wet. “I'm not dying like this.”

Kent had died like that. So had Yates, and Helena. Scott, having nursed his older brother until Kent had tried to bite out his throat, had chosen to drown himself, instead. Daud had killed Benjimin and Henshaw before it could get that bad. Billie had been the one to grant little Ashley that mercy...

“Tell me what you know,” said Daud. The whaling mask flattened out his voice.

“Cure me,” Lensman insisted.

Daud hooked a finger under the edge of his long glove and peeled it off. Beneath, the Mark was as sharply defined as it had been the day the Outsider had branded it into his skin, decades ago: a tattoo that would never fade or blur. He summoned power, let the Mark smoke with light and illuminate the dark edges of his mask from below.

“My people don't bargain with me.”

Lensman swallowed. Coughed. And started talking.

“It wasn't a mistake that got me caught. I wasn't stupid, I didn't go snooping too obviously. Williamson got caught with his hands down the pants of some junior brother—they both got branded.” Williamson had been gunning for the position of High Overseer. “Hodge knew ahead of time, he set it up. Then he got paranoid, started hauling everyone in for questioning... they took my mask. One of his cronies had known Lensman, he knew straight away I wasn't him. Fucker. Idiots. I got plenty out of them while he was breaking off bits of me. They thought I was part of a conspiracy to set somebody else up with the red coat. Somebody tipped off Hodge, y'see. He didn't know who, but he figured he'd be next on their list. He thought whoever it was had Campbell's book... the old High Overseer, he used to keep a book of blackmail with him at all times. Had the entire Abbey under his thumb. Hodge was frantic to find it.”

He paused to cough, and added with satisfaction, “He didn't. Got dragged right out of the interrogation room... he'd been stealing from the Abbey vaults. Somebody else took him down. Richards, he came in, I told him I was just trying to turn over a new leaf in service against the Outsider, I didn't have anything to do with Hodge or any kind of faction. Swore I didn't know what Lensman might have been running from.”

“Richards?”

“Younger guy, dark-haired, one of the archivists. Bookworm..”

“Is he in the running for High Overseer now?”

“Maybe. Unless somebody else got tipped off about him. I dunno. He let me go, eventually. Had them dump me out with the damned trash. And then the fucking rats got me. Fuck.” His eyes were... not exactly watering.

“You hear anything more about this blackmail book?”

“Richards didn't have it. He definitely believes it exists, though. Wanted it just as much as Hodge did. Said he'd tried to get his hands on it before, but Campbell kept it with him all the time, and then Martin stole it off him and did the same. Dunno if Richards is in it—he's kind of a zealot, might actually believe all that crap in the Strictures. He talked about doing a purification of the Abbey. I told him maybe somebody else was doing that, but he, ah, didn't appreciate the commentary.”

If Martin had had it from Campbell... then, surely, the man who had disposed of both those men would have had the best opportunity to take the thing. A purification of the Abbey, indeed. But that would require getting _in_ to the Abbey, or at least meeting with Overseers outside it. Damn it. If Corvo had been caught there—_damn _him. How would he even have gotten in?

Daud couldn't send Whalers to search Holger Square. He was useless there himself.

Firm questioning decanted the rest of Lensman's information, at length. All of it was nearly a week out of date—as rapidly as the Abbey's politics were evolving, that was lifetimes. Daud noted it all anyway. Maybe one of the names Lensman mentioned would still be alive, when the Abbey got around to sending another delegation.

“That's all,” Lensman whispered eventually. His voice was hoarse from so much talking; he had to stop every other word to cough, now. “That's all... I know.”

Daud nodded.

“Please... save me.”

“My power grants no immunity to the plague,” Daud said flatly. And considering the amount of blood that was inevitably commingled during the binding, there was no damn way he was trying it with someone infected.

Lensman was outraged, reddened eyes widening. “But—but—”

“If you don't want to die of plague, I'll give you the same out I offer my people.”

“Ah!” Lensman said, and doubled over, coughing. His cloth mask grew darker with stains. “Ah! Bastard! Fucking bastard—fine! Do it, you—”

Daud granted him mercy: he froze time, first. Lensman was dead before the world resumed, before he could realize it.

Disposal of the body, he left to his Whalers. They'd handled such before, knew not to come into contact with the infected blood. For himself, he scrubbed his hands, and found a clean pair of gloves. Then he went back to work. Corvo's papers wouldn't read themselves.


	9. Chapter 9

Daud forced himself to stop at dawn and take another nap; Emily's usual lessons were cancelled in favour of more coaching from Waverly, and Daud wanted to be awake for that. It was more of the same from the evening before, Emily practising how to field questions about her Lord Protector—his devotion to her, to the Empire, to her mother, his fitness for duty. Mostly, it seemed to be Waverly saying the most outrageous things she could think of while Emily practised keeping her temper.

The Empress was sick with nerves through lunch, which combined practising the—actually quite complex—etiquette of a Lord Protector with an uncomfortable-looking Geoff Curnow. Then there was a flurry of maids, bundling her into austere finery and doing her hair and makeup, while Waverly departed for her own preparations and Daud found himself trying to keep an eye on it all and stay out of the way at the same time. He didn't know how Corvo didn't go mad, doing this. Madder.

The drive to Parliament was thankfully short; the clamour of the crowd as the Empress descended regrettably loud. Daud lurked on a rooftop, ready on a hair trigger to stop time—but she made it indoors with Galia and Tynan beside her. Daud made his own way inside, avoiding the guards.

“The crowd was pleased to see you,” he heard Waverly saying to her as he reached them again. It hadn't even occurred to Daud to see the crowd as anything except a threat.

“This bill is for them,” said the Empress.

The Empress' speech, Daud knew, was in support of a bill of Waverly's, the broad gist of which was extending and deepening the emergency taxes on the rich to provide better relief to the commons. It was also, very daringly, classifying the Abbey among those taxable, which if passed would break with five centuries of tradition, and deliver a beating to the Abbey's coffers besides. The nobility, corrupt nearly to a man, hated the higher taxes but at this point were almost used to them, and Waverly was gambling that enough would want to stick it to the Abbey of the Everyman to let it pass. Most of the opposition was deep in the pockets of non-noble industrialists like Jack Ramsey. The Abbey itself had been able to muster no coherent response to it at all so far—Corvo working behind the scenes, apparently.

If the Abbey did have Corvo, it would all explode in their faces.

The Empress' speech was clear and ringing: that of a child who had suffered at the Abbey's hands, who proved that with the corruption in the Abbey as it was, no one was safe from it: it had become a political entity, not a religious one. Daud heard it all and listened to barely a word, keeping an eye on the lords and ladies, instead. After her speech would be a short question and response period—a custom an Empress was privileged to ignore, but Emily was still proving herself and would be for some time. Especially with Captain Curnow standing behind her.

Predictably, the questions were all tangential to the bill—they were really about Corvo.

“My Lord Protector advises me, as do the others of the Royal Council. He does not decide my policy,” said the Empress to the first one, but that just meant the questions devolved. Emily bore it gracefully for the most part, but the few times she faltered were marked by hundreds of greedy eyes.

“It's no wonder she supports it. Corvo's heresy is hardly a secret,” Daud heard Lord Clathermont remark. “He ran around wearing the Outsider's symbol openly during the interregnum! Growing up near that must influence a child—no wonder she opposes the Abbey now.”

“She's not stupid, my dear,” said his companion, Lady Stirling. “Between the Abbey and the Outsider, she's picked the one who put her back on the throne over the ones who tried to take her off it. I'd do the same.”

“Yes, and where is Corvo today, hmm? Evil will consume its own,” said Clathermont, and then, unable to keep a straight face, burst into snorting laughter while Stirling tittered.

“It's clear enough why Waverly's so gung-ho, of course. That sister of hers...”

So it went. No one tried to kill the Empress; this crowd wouldn't dirty their own hands. Daud almost wished for an attempt, just to have an excuse to kill somebody—except he'd be obliged to take them alive, and the nobles would probably crowd around and attempt to be witty about his performance, damn it.

Waverly found him in the shadowed balcony where he was lurking, and joined him at the rail. “The speech was well-received, I thought.”

Daud grunted.

“But it's going to be very difficult to pass this bill if he stays missing,” she added.

He hadn't shared Lensman's information with the Empress yet—it wasn't a real lead, and he'd not wanted to distract her. He certainly wasn't about to share it with Waverly first. But.

“My informant in Holger Square is dead,” he admitted, watching closely for her reaction.

“You think...?”

“I don't know. I can't get in.”

“I take it there's something more than their security giving you a problem.”

She might consider the music-boxes such. “Would it matter, if it was?”

“If it's something that might trouble the Lord Protector's ailing lungs, then yes.” Her hands tightened on the balustrade.

“Thinking of cutting your losses?”

“I'm wondering if any of your people are demolitions experts.”

He gave her an incredulous look.

She shrugged. “If it's that—I can get a full pound of flesh for him. But I need to _know_.” Her lips thinned. “Damn the man, anyway.”

He grunted softly. Thomas had left this morning with orders to make discreet enquiries, but Daud doubted they'd get any takers—Holger Square was just as difficult a target for someone without a Whaler's abilities, if in different ways. Waverly might be their best option. “I have people watching the exits. Anyone comes out, I'll know.”

“A pity you couldn't keep an equal eye on the Lord Protector.”

The nobles mingled. Daud spied. Across the city, the announcements repeated: _“...offered for any information leading to the discovery of his whereabouts...”_ As if Corvo was some runaway heiress or kidnapped lord.

As soon as Waverly judged would not give the appearance of weakness, they bundled the Empress back into her carriage and returned her to the Tower. Curnow was grim-faced and displeased. “I can't keep doing that,” he muttered to Daud, as they stood back to let a horde of maids descend on the Empress. “I don't have the knack of it. The things they dare say to her...”

Daud grunted.

“She needs a new Lord Protector,” Curnow said bluntly. “I can think of some potentials... young men. Corvo would eat them for lunch. But at least it would be someone big and looming, not a washed up Watch Captain.”

Emily had cried herself to sleep last night; Daud would rather suggest she flee the city than that she appoint a new Lord Protector. If it came down to the former, some brainless young bravo with a sword wouldn't keep things from sliding off the cliff anyway.

His head ached. He shook off Curnow and went to take a catnap while Emily was being redressed for high tea with her Minister of Finance. Then it was back to it—although this time, Daud spent his time on guard reading more of Corvo's papers, while Curnow needed fear no insult to his Empress. The finance minister was an ancient, half-blind old woman who cared not one whit for who sat upon the throne or who was taxed or paid, so long as the money moved in accordance with the Empire's byzantine fiscal structure, which she cultivated and ordered with an iron hand. Half the finance office would collapse into dust when she died. She was apolitical and indispensable, a relic from Euhorn's youth, and Emily sulked through every meeting with her, or so Daud was forewarned. On this occasion she was sombre and attentive, which was totally lost on the old lady, who was busy regaling Waverly with the minutia of indexing changes her new bill would require.

He was working through a series of dull memos from some guard lieutenant with execrable handwriting when one of the younger novices appeared beside him in a clumsy burst of smoke. “Sir,” she said breathlessly. “Thomas sent me—he found Attano.”

Daud allowed no emotion to cross his features, even as he snapped the folder shut. “Where? Alive or dead?”

“Lower Packer District off of Farthingsgate Avenue, and, um, he didn't say, sir, just to tell you that you should come yourself, quickly.”

Which meant what? Tempting to simply yank on the Arcane Bond and demand Thomas explain himself in person, but Thomas wasn't a novice, and no matter his love of complicated schemes, he was too levelheaded for unnecessary dramatics during a crisis.

“Fine. Find Rulfio, Julian, Roberts, tell them what's happened and that I want all our searchers back at base or joining a watch team. That goes for you when you're done, too.” He made a much neater transversal as she saluted, placing him on the roof next to Galia; she'd remain in charge of the day watch on the Empress.

“If she notices something and asks, tell her,” Daud said, when he'd relayed the brief information he had. “Otherwise keep your mouth shut.”

Lower Packer was adjacent to the old Distillery District, but had been abandoned long before it. Daud flashed by his office to pick up a few extra grenades.

It would have been quicker by boat than on foot, even with transversals, and if they were going to be carrying back a corpse or an injured Lord Protector then they definitely needed one. He'd figure it out when he got there; maybe they'd be burning everything to the waterline instead. A fitting tribute for a man who wasn't about to get a parade. Daud hit the eastern edge of the district with nerves jangling, and not just from the bone-scraping moans of the weepers filling the streets below—Outsider's eyes, there were a lot of them, crowding the street. This district had been abandoned for months—they should have died off by now.

If Corvo had gotten himself turned into a weeper, Daud was going to strangle him.

Cassia met him on Farthingsgate, stepping out of the shadow of some ductwork and saluting him silently. She led him over to a broken skylight in one of the abandoned packing factories, and they transversed their way down and around the massive rusting machinery. An enormous wheel on the western wall cranked around to pull up a heavy steel door—Cassia had to transverse in to make it through, as it slammed shut immediately behind them, cutting off the light.

Daud switched to Void-gaze and saw that there was another wheel on this side of the door. There were also humans below—at least one live one, and many more bodies. And a lot of other things besides.

“I should wait upstairs,” said Cassia, and it was comfortingly familiar, to hear a voice filtered through a Whaler's mask after so long hearing reports from them in the same treated cloth masks recommended by Sokolov for the Guard. “Thomas sent for Rinaldo as well.”

That was the first encouraging sign he'd seen in this whole situation. He gave her a nod and swiftly took the stairs downward to the factory sub-floor. As he got closer, at least some of the shapes in the dark began to resolve into recognizable things: and he could hear them, too, harsh cawing and shrieking. Birds. Birds kept alive—caged, around a pile of corpses, both humans and rats. Daud reached the subfloor and let his vision fade back to normal; there was enough purple light here to examine the wire cage he found himself standing beside. It might have enclosed equipment, once, but now it housed a dozen massive black crows that all started shrieking as they took note of him.

The whole district stank, but there was a whole new level of olfactory hell to be found beside the cage of carrion birds feasting and shitting on the corpses of weepers. Daud envied Cassia her mask and her posting above, and moved around the cage, toward the light.

The lamps were placed around the lowest pit in the basement, and they were but the tip of the iceberg. Shrines to the Outsider invariably required four components: the lanterns, the purple cloth, whalebone, and madness. If the first two were present in restrained quantities here, then the abundance of the latter two more than made up for the lack: an entire ribcage of bones—no, surely that many must have come from more than one whale—circled the inside of the pit, and every one was covered in pictograms sketched with blood. Some, Daud recognized; most, he did not. Bone charms hung from every massive rib, not all of them complete; some lay half-finished, their music shrieking at Daud's ears.

In the centre of it all—

Daud's eyes tried to slide away from it; whatever lay on that altar was so unnatural that just trying to look at it felt like trying to wade through wet cement. It was like Delilah's last painting: more than canvas, more than anything that should be seen by human eyes. It was the same sense of wrongness he got looking at Corvo, sometimes, the kind that made him wonder about the man's sanity; something almost like what he felt from the Outsider, when He was feeling playful.

Daud forced himself to look anyway. To mundane eyes it was a crow, even more oversized than its caged brethren. Obviously dead. Someone had gutted it open, and shoved in—Daud struggled, but couldn't make his eyes focus past the crude stitching that tried to hold the crow closed again. He got an impression in pieces, only: a glint of glass, a ribbon of smooth exposed muscle. Whatever it was distended the body grotesquely.

The bird—the entire altar—had been doused in blood; it puddled over the sides and into a pool on the floor, and in the middle of that, Corvo Attano lay in a heap, recognizable by the trim of his coat.

“Son of a bitch,” Daud mumbled. Corvo really had jumped off into the deep.

A shadow detached from the corner and resolved itself into Thomas. A moment later he was at Daud's side. “Sir. Lord Attano's still breathing, but not well. I've sent for Rinaldo and transport, but I wasn't sure if it was wise to approach.”

The altar was lit by more light than could be explained by the void-lamps. Damn it. “It's undoubtedly a stupid idea,” Daud agreed, then grimaced and stepped forward.

The lights vanished as he reached the Lord Protector's body, the world going dark.

“You didn't dream of Corvo's blade at your throat last night,” the Outsider said, right in Daud's ear.

He suppressed the urge to turn; it would get him nowhere. For all that the Outsider liked to watch, at His shrines Daud was rarely able to do anything at all. Fingers trailed down his arm and he wasn't able to flinch away.

“Of course, you didn't sleep much last night at all. Too busy trying to anticipate the needs of a child-Empress whose mother you murdered. Ah, but you _have_ gone far for little Emily, haven't you? Yet you've left Delilah's tale untold. I wonder—is it because you don't pretend it's enough, or because you don't want to hear them confirm it?

“And now the man upon whom you pinned your dreams of absolution lies dying. A pedestal is a terrible and marvellous thing to see shattered. I do wonder what you'll do with the pieces.”

The dark released him. Daud stumbled forward, and violently recoiled from the bird—_thing—_in front of him. He turned to Corvo. Flinched again.

A moment. He gave himself a moment to pack away the Outsider's words, all but the most important: Corvo was dying. A moment was all he could spare and so it would be enough.

Daud dropped to a crouch beside Corvo, trying to figure out where all the blood had come from. (If it was Corvo's—but he found himself unable to entertain the thought that it wasn't, not yet.) Probably his front, or his left... he'd collapsed curled in on himself. Daud held a hand just in front of Corvo's nose, and after a long pause felt the faintest buff of breath. His skin was pale and cold.

A renewed racket from the bird-cage announced a new visitor. A few moments later Rinaldo was there, hesitating at the edge of the light. “Sir?”

“The shrine's no longer waiting. See what you can do.”

With visible reluctance—and that _was_ unusual—Rinaldo entered the circle of whale ribs and crouched down opposite to Daud. “It seems I've done this before,” he murmured—which, yes: Corvo needed to stop ending up half-dead and their problem. Except he would be Daud's problem until he killed him, now, so maybe Daud would have better luck trying to get him to stop ending up half-dead. Ha.

They rolled Corvo over. The source of all the blood was visible at once: a deep slice on the inside of his left arm, slitting the vein from wrist halfway to his elbow—probably done with the whalebone knife that had fallen to the concrete beneath him. Other gashes, crusted with blood, marked the back of his left hand, but it was the deeper wound that started spurting flesh blood, while Rinaldo swore and pulled Corvo's arm up, shifting his grip to apply pressure.

“This is deep,” Rinaldo said after a moment. “Lucky bastard must have fallen at an angle to put pressure on it, or he'd've been dead a while.” His mask turned briefly toward the shrine: which was a distinct possibility, yes. “Even so...”

“Might be a bone charm.” The cacophony of the ones decorating the whale-ribs made it hard to hear, but the same hissing melody came from Corvo himself: he had at least a few on his person. Knowing him, more than a few.

“Damn powerful charm, sir. Hold this, please?” Rinaldo transferred Corvo's arm to Daud's grip, pulling bandaging from his kit and beginning the process of tightly wrapping the wound. Daud studied Corvo as Rinaldo finished and returned to trying to rouse him, and then, when that failed, laboriously getting elixir into him, massaging his throat to make him swallow one tiny portion at a time.

“Too dark in here to tell if he damaged anything complicated, and the elixir will just seal it all over. He may need surgery,” Rinaldo warned.

He had to live, first. Corvo barely wore an expression at the best of times, but right now he looked no more alive than a mannequin, and considerably less so than some corpses Daud had seen. Rinaldo could treat the body; was there a mind left to return to it? Or was he merely exceedingly far away, being tormented by the Outsider in some distant corner of the Void?

At length, Rinaldo reported, “No other injuries that I can find. But he's hypothermic and he's lost too much blood, and I don't like that I can't wake him up.”

“I told Justin to contact the ferryman,” said Thomas. “The canal's clear to the river.”

Corvo's boatman had proven himself reliable over the past few weeks, and his discretion was unquestioned. But Samuel's _Amaranth_ was not large. “Rinaldo, you and I will take him,” said Daud. “Thomas, set a team to watch this building. Nobody goes in or out—civilians or your team—and everyone keeps line of sight on each other at all times.” He paused and rethought that. “If Granny Rags shows up, don't interfere with her, but I want to know immediately.”

“Anything you want done with the occupants?”

The screaming and cawing was starting to die down, but Daud had no doubt that their exit would stir it up again, and no desire to see if the birds had become as vicious as the plague-rats they'd been fed. “Leave them. They've plenty of food. Leave everything.” He damn well wasn't going to take that thing on the altar with him; that was between Corvo and the Outsider, and Daud wanted no part of it.

The front of Corvo's coat was soaked with blood, rendering it stiff and sticky; it had smeared over his face and stuck his hair in tacky clumps. Daud's nose had given up in protest somewhere around the birdcage, thankfully, but there was nothing to do except ignore the way dried blood occasionally scraped off against his face as he carried Corvo's limp weight up to the roof and over to the canal, Rinaldo fussing at his side.

Samuel was waiting with his boat by the time they got there, his face concerned but not grim when he saw Corvo. He produced a rough woollen blanket for them to bundle Corvo into, and Daud and Rinaldo tucked him between them, trying to lend a buffer against the chill wind along the Wrenhaven. By the time they reached the Tower, Rinaldo had insisted they sacrifice their own jackets, huddling together under the pile of blanket and coats with Corvo to try to bring his body temperature to something normal.

Samuel dropped them off at a discreet pier, closer to Daud's apartments than the Tower, and Daud made a decision. Stupid to go back to the Tower like this. He didn't even know if Corvo had a mind left—if he ever had. And the wind was damn cold when one was in shirtsleeves, especially now that the sun was fully below the horizon. Daud picked Corvo up—bundled up so much now that he might have been a rug instead of a person—and transversed up and away in the direction of his apartments.

Indoors was thankfully _warm_. He left Rinaldo to the task of bundling Corvo into Daud's own bed and, keeping one eye on them, summoned Roberts, giving her instructions to bring Sokolov, and only Sokolov, and let him speak to no one else along the way. Then he shook out Corvo's gear and started going through his pockets. The mask was there, of course. Daud eyed it and set it carefully aside, considering the timing: if Corvo _had_ eavesdropped on his conversation with Thomas and Roberts after the spar, and heard what Thomas had said... Daud was sceptical of coincidences.

Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking, trying to find any hint of logic in an act of madness. 

There were a half-dozen bone charms tied to the inside lining of Corvo's coat—at least two of which must have helped sustain him, by their particular song; Daud hastily untied them and dumped the whole lot of them on top of Corvo, leaving it to Rinaldo to frown and rearrange things. Crossbow, bolts—sleep bolts, incendiary bolts... Daud separated it out, keeping the latter carefully apart from the stockpile of grenades that Corvo had squirrelled away, and the springrazors in their own separate pile as well. It was a wonder that the man hadn't blown himself up by now, carrying all that. There was healthy paranoia and preparedness, there was unhealthy paranoia and hoarding, and then there was _that_.

Nor were bone charms and weaponry all that Corvo had in his coat; he had four purses, tucked away in various pockets, spools of wire, half a set of good silverware, and a collection of rings, cameos, and engraved pocket-watches from what seemed to be most of Dunwall's nobility. How the man didn't jingle every time he moved, Daud had no idea. Had he had this much on him when he'd changed coats in front of Daud two nights ago? It hadn't seemed so at the time. But surely he hadn't picked it all up in the scant hours before he'd slit his own wrist and bled out over his dark ritual.

Daud checked the coat over again, and felt stiffer resistance than even reinforced cloth should provide. It took some prodding to find the seam of the secret pocket, but here at last he struck gold: a pair of leather-bound books, one stuffed with loose papers and looking as though it had been soaked through a few times. The other was in better condition, and Daud opened it first, only to be immediately thwarted. It was in code.

A quick flip through the pages showed notes here and there in Corvo's handwriting—also coded. This must be Campbell's book of blackmail. So Corvo _did_ have it. Well, it couldn't be uncrackable. Daud pocketed it to attend to later.

He opened the second book, and the first loose page stared up at him, the lower right corner stained dark with old blood.

_YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER_


	10. Chapter 10

_YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER_

Daud recognized the hand: he'd read it in a hundred different old memos since he'd sworn himself to her daughter's service. He'd seen this exact desperate slant before, too: in the Void, a page filled with one phrase repeated over and over, his guilt written into inescapable truth. But how had this made its way to reality?

He gently turned it over, afraid any swift motion might rip the paper. The next page, also loose, had once been waterlogged. The childish handwriting had smeared, but not into illegibility.

_Corvo,_

_I am very sad. They say that you're dead like Mother, but I'm going to put this note in a bottle and throw it into the river because I do not believe them. Living here is very strange. I do not like it, so please come for me if you can._

More notes, behind these: another half-dozen, equally strange, before the first page of the book, which was covered in tiny writing, Corvo's usual script writ small and shaky:

_Rulfio Sharpe_  
_Vivian Longrass_  
_ Elizabeth Roberts_  
_ Rinaldo Marcia Escobar_  
_ <strike>Billie Lurk</strike>_  
<strike>_ Harrison Sacks_</strike>  
_ Julian Hamish_  
_ Thomas Carmine_  
...

It went on. It missed a few of the recently dead, but none of the living. Some names had stars or checkmarks by them; some more than one, with no pattern that Daud could immediately discern.

Well, so Corvo knew Daud's people; that was to be expected. Even if Daud hadn't known Roberts' given name.

The pages after were diagrams, and those were more disturbing. An anatomist's sketch of a human heart, done by an untrained hand, and then covered with fanciful clockwork additions. Pictograms and symbols that Daud had carved himself—and others he'd never descended to trying. Rats, trees, whales, skeletons—bones, always bones. Circles. Corvo had scribbled notes around the edges:

_They are killing the whales. _

_All lights will go out_

_What has been done. A cage of bone holds no lock. _

_Sightless eyes!_

_Rats move through city at will; bone?_

_Blood_

_Less intuitive sacrifice_

Daud flipped through the pages quickly, rather than get caught up in them. He paused at a page in another familiar hand—

Roberts arrived then with a pissed-off Sokolov, interrupting his perusal of the book, and Daud tucked it away before the Royal Physician could see it. No good would come of that. Sokolov harrumphed as he saw Corvo in the bed; his dislike for Corvo was well-known. But he was also the best physician in the city, unfortunately.

“Blood loss,” he pronounced, peering at Corvo's face and lifting up his eyelids, examining his ears and palpating his skull. “He seems to be warming well, but this lack of rousability is concerning. Pupils are reactive, no bruising or fracturing of the skull... found him in a sewer, did you?”

“Nearly.”

“Prime grounds for plague. Have you given him elixir?” His eyes were sharp as he looked at Daud. Maybe he _did_ have some inkling of his concoction's effects on the Marked. Or maybe he was simply concerned about plague exposure, although Daud was well aware that Sokolov drank nearly as much elixir as he did alcohol.

“Yes,” Daud said, declining to explain. “Rinaldo, show him.”

“Not sure if he'll need surgery,” said Rinaldo, muffled through his mask. He pulled Corvo's left arm free of the blankets and started unwrapping his hasty bandaging job.

“This is mostly healed.”

A shrug. “Elixir.”

“I... see. But this—wait. This, here, this is older—how much does elixir age a wound on you?”

“Those were healed before. Do they matter?”

“Yes, they matter! These are fucking bite marks! The characteristic scarring—these were from a weeper!”

That got them all staring at Corvo's bared forearm. In the better light it was plain to see that there was, indeed, scarring that fit the size of a human mouth, like Corvo had thrown up an arm to protect himself and gotten it gnawed on. More than once: there was a particularly deep half-circle of scars nearer to his elbow, but also two fainter ones nearer to his wrist. Gaps showed in the semi-circles, picking out the individual teeth, with the occasional larger gap as if the biter had rotten or missing teeth.

“No, those are all old,” Rinaldo decided, with much relief. “Even with elixir. Weeks, maybe a month.” Weeks. Infection would have shown itself by now.

Sokolov stared at him. Then he gave a cry, so sudden and loud that Daud found himself an inch from drawing his sword. “That fucking—he was bit! That long ago!” He scrambled for his bag again, coming up with a small knife and an empty vial.

“Yes, that long ago,” said Rinaldo impatiently, and then—“What are you _doing?”_

Sokolov had nicked Corvo's arm, and now pressed the vial against it to collect the trickle of blood. “Hold that! And you”—he rounded on Daud—“I need Piero Joplin here at once. At once! And my kit! This is unprecedented, this is—”

Daud flicked a hand at Roberts, and she vanished in smoke. Given Sokolov's obsessions that should have elicited a loud reaction, but this new discovery seemed to have taken the whole of his attention. He barely wavered before turning back to Corvo and taking the knife to the rest of his sleeve. Daud went to stand by his shoulder—he might need to pull Sokolov off Corvo, if Sokolov got too excited. Vials of blood were rarely a good sign.

“Enough of this,” Rinaldo growled, setting down the vial. “What does this have to do with his wrist? The bites obviously healed fine, we've all seen him.”

“Ah! No! Keep that there, we need samples!” Sokolov pressed the mouth of the vial back against the wound. “Weeper bite marks—he was infected!”

“Obviously he _wasn't_.”

“Exactly!”

In the bemused silence that followed, Roberts appeared on the windowsill, carrying a moaning Joplin. She plunked him down onto his feet, both of them staggering—Daud recognized the signs of magic overdraw in her slow movements.

“Remarkable,” Sokolov murmured; he shot Roberts a covetous look. But that was as far as he got before his colleague interrupted him, weakly asking, “What's going on?”

“Look here, Piero—look!”

“Scarring... a weeper bite? Oh, you found Corvo, that's—ah, not good, if he is infected. Oh! But this is old—how old? How could it possibly be—”

“A month!”

“_Really?_ Then he must be—this is incredible! We need samples at once—”

“Yes, yes, didn't I say to bring a kit—”

“I'm bandaging this,” Rinaldo announced. “He can't afford to lose more blood.”

That seemed to take Joplin back a step, at least. “Oh—no, I suppose not. That is exceptionally unfortunate.”

“Don't be stupid. We can't afford to waste—”

Daud hauled Sokolov back by his collar as he tried to interfere with Rinaldo. “Explain what's so important, or I'll throw you out.” Alas that it wouldn't be through a window, but the Empire still needed Sokolov.

Sokolov drew himself up. “Corvo Attano was infected with the plague and either survived it or proved entirely immune. If we can analyze him, duplicate it—we can develop a cure.”

“Other people have survived the plague,” said Rinaldo.

Joplin shook his head. “That is a technically accurate statement that is nonetheless functionally untrue for our purposes. The error lies in thinking of a plague as a static, unchanging creation. That is where Hiram Burrows ran into trouble as well. He believed he was unleashing a disease akin to particularly potent strain of influenza, and failed to account for the differences due to its origins, which promoted rapid mutation upon being introduced into Dunwall's environment—”

“Pah, it would have mutated anyway. You have not seen the things that live on that continent, you don't—”

“Get to the point,” Daud interrupted.

Joplin collected himself. “The initial strain of plague caused fever, chills, coughing and wheezing, and respiratory complications leading to death in those already unhealthy, or without access to medical care. In short, it seemed a perfect vehicle for Burrows' plan to exterminate the poor. However. While that strain continues to exist, others quickly began to develop. Most had only minor differences from the original and can be easily prevented or treated by my remedy or Anton's elixir, although they do continue to spread via the rat population. The exception to this rule is the weeper variant. In rats it produces no physiological differences, but in humans it causes, in the late stage of the disease, the weeping and vomiting of blood, the loss of mental acuity, and general rabidity. In fact, I believe it may have arisen as a hybrid from one of the original strains coming into contact with a rabies-infected specimen. Like rabies, the infection is so far impossible to eradicate once it enters the body.”

“Elixir and remedy do nothing against it,” Sokolov said flatly. “Nothing does. It is always fatal and it is as contagious as the Void—one bite from a Weeper and you're a dead man walking.” He stabbed a finger at Corvo. “But not _him._”

“Empress Emily's hospitals do much good for victims of the more mundane strains, but are leading to higher rates of infection leading to weepers... it is simply too opportunistic a disease. One cut is enough, and then there is nothing we can do. They are coughing blood within the first week, bleeding from the eyes in the second, and spreading it onward. Unless we can defeat this strain, quarantine will eventually break.” Piero turned to Corvo, shoulder's slumping. “But you said, blood loss? ...Oh, if he is unconscious just from that, it must be bad. Anton, we can't...”

“We can do what we must! Every day is a gamble that the blockade will hold, that the plague will not mutate again. How much longer can we hold before it spreads to the rest of Gristol, to all of the Isles?”

“The military—”

“—has the most rapidly-increasing rate of infection! They are overstretched and dying. We must act—”

“We can't afford to be careless, Anton.”

“On the contrary, we can't afford caution!”

“Enough,” said Daud. “Back up. You need Corvo to find a cure for the weepers—”

“And a preventative. Until the rats are eliminated, that is paramount.”

The rats would inherit the city, as far as Daud could see; there had always been rats, always would be. “Fine. What kind of 'samples' do you need?”

“Blood,” Sokolov said promptly. “Saliva, urine, tissue—especially the liver and pancreas—”

“That _will_ kill him, Anton—”

“You aren't killing him,” said Daud.

“If we cannot find a cure—”

“He's the Empress'”—_Lord Protector_ seemed too cold, but how many fathers would swim through weeper-infested sewers for their child? How many would _succeed?_ Daud left off; the possessive was accurate enough.

“She must understand that sacrifices are necessary—”

“You're. Not. Killing. Him,” Daud repeated. “And if you take this to the Empress I'll gut you myself.”

“Don't be obstreperous, Anton. Even from a practical standpoint, he is our single subject—we must preserve him at all costs.” Joplin peered at Corvo again. “It may not even be a mundane cure at all.”

“I see I am surrounded by men who fail to perceive the great wave crashing down upon us,” Sokolov said tightly.

“Saliva and urine can be obtained simply enough,” said Joplin, ignoring his colleague's histrionics. “For blood—we could attempt a transfusion first, but that is risky...”

“It would simply dilute any sample.”

“Then make do with what you already have,” said Daud, indicating the vial Sokolov was clutching. “Now, one of you see to his damn arm.”

Corvo had, apparently, cut something finicky and unwise during his self-mutilation; fixing it required a round of minor surgery and the spilling of more blood, which made Sokolov gleeful and Daud suspicious. At last the two were done and could be shown the door, Joplin saying, “—the problem is always the clotting reaction, but if we could test for that ahead of time—”

Daud shut the door on them and returned to the bedside, where Rinaldo was propping Corvo up so he could coax more elixir down his throat. “You let them at him again, they'll wind up killing him,” Rinaldo observed. “This won't fix the blood loss. And there's something else going on if he's not waking up yet. Could be magic-exhaustion, maybe.”

“If it keeps him put the next couple days, I'll be happy.” He needed the time to figure out what in the Void Corvo had been up to. The Void turned some people strange and some fully mad, and if Corvo had lost enough of himself to be a danger to the Empress—but surely that would be the last piece of him that would remain.

“The Empress will want to see him,” Rinaldo spoke the unhappy thought.

Oh, he knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got chewed on a lot ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	11. Chapter 11

Emily would accept no delays and hear no explanations once Daud had said the critical words. There was nothing for it but to take her straight to her Lord Protector's side, and once there it was clear she did not throw herself upon him only out of grave concern. _Then_, she wanted explanations, and turned to Daud. “What's wrong with him? Will he be okay? Who did this to him?”

Rinaldo, now sans whaling mask and dressed less conspicuously, got to try and explain the first two, sanitized of all mentions of magic. He'd gotten Corvo cleaned up, too, and changed the bedclothes—or, rather, supervised a couple novices at it—so now the man looked unremarkable except for his extreme pallor and continuing unconsciousness. There was a good chance he'd be fine, Rinaldo reassured, but then he was undone by the childish hope pinned upon him and could not explain further.

“We don't know why he isn't waking up,” Daud said, when she ran out of patience for hemming and hawing and turned her demanding stare to him.

“Sokolov and Piero can figure it out. Fetch them here.”

“They already tried, Your Majesty. They did fix his arm.”

“They should be here anyway.” Her face fell. “Oh, but... but they cannot leave their work for too long. You must send for them to check him at regular intervals, then.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

And he would have to contrive that she wasn't in the room at the time, so that Sokolov could not make leading comments...

“Oh. That's settled, then.” She looked back up at him, gaze piercing. “You avoided one of my questions. Who did this?”

There was one literally true answer—but it was hardly the whole story. Had Corvo intended to give himself fully to the ritual, or had he simply miscalculated, as so many did in the throes of Void-magic? And in either case—he had hardly arrived there on his own. Vera Moray's handwriting filled a page in his journal, but the whole of his impetus could scarcely be pinned upon her either, not in the face of betrayal twice over, poison and six months in a prison known to break men. And before that—whose hand had wielded the sword that sent an Empire spiralling into madness...

“Tell me,” said the child Empress, and all eloquence deserted Daud.

“He did it himself.”

The Empress' lips turned bloodless as she pressed them together, but they did not wobble. The hand she'd left on Corvo's shoulder, possessive, clenched into a fist, tangling the fabric of the loose shirt Rinaldo had found for him.

She did not look away from her Lord Protector's face as she asked, “Is this the Outsider's doing?”

So she did know, then. Or perhaps it was simply a question any reasonable person would ask, when their loved one turned to madness. Daud hesitated.

“I know Corvo wears His mark,” said Emily. “You do, too. It shines through your gloves, when you think no one's looking.”

Ah. How easily he was undone by this child.

“He was attempting some sort of ritual. I don't know what or why, but I'm working on it. Best hope is for him to wake up and tell us.”

The Empress took this in soberly. Then she bent over and whispered in Corvo's ear, “He can't have you. You're mine first.”

The selfishness of children. Daud wondered if the ancient personification of the Void was mature enough to share, and winced.

  


  


The Empress allowed herself to be bundled off to bed eventually. Daud heard reports from his crews, spoke briefly with a (prematurely, in his opinion) relieved Geoff Curnow, and shuffled the scouting and security teams back to something resembling normalcy. Waverly did not show up in person, but did send over a draft of a bland announcement that the Lord Protector had been found. It was free enough of details that he returned it with no recommended changes.

The clock wound down, and Daud was left with two journals: one full of gibberish, and the other, madness. The Abbey would not wait upon the Lord Protector's health, so Daud summoned Thomas and handed Campbell's book to him, and was listing likely decryptions when Thomas coughed apologetically and suggested Quinn might have better luck.

Billie would have taken the challenge and thrived on it.

Something in Daud, balking at showing even Thomas, did not want to entertain the thought—but, Void take him, he already trusted her with the Empress. He sighed, summoned her, and began his explanation again.

Corvo's journal, he kept for himself.

The note he'd glimpsed earlier, written in Vera Moray's hand, made about as much sense as any of her ritual instructions, speaking of the blood of dead men, crying birdies, and the carriers of souls. More pictograms were drawn in her shaky hand, and Corvo had scribbled numbers around the edges.

More loose pages, stuffed in-between a pictograph of a drowning man and a crude diagram labelling the major organs of a crow: a suicide note, from a plague victim, planning to die with their also-infected lover: _...The rats will inherit this city. _Pages torn from another's writer's journal, detailing the mutations of the plague in crabbed script. A faded anatomical drawing—the level of skill suggested it had been made by an academic—of a human skeleton.

He came to a journal page full of Corvo's writing, blotched with ink, the paper ripped by the pen in several places: _YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER _

The next page after that was another human heart. This time, the clockwork additions were drawn apart, broken down, cryptic little notes scribbled around them: _to hold sorrow_, said one, and _vision?_ was scrawled next to a lens. At the bottom of the page, Corvo had written: _TRANSMOGRIFICATION_

The drawings became more complicated, arrangements of pictograms. A list of slaughter-houses—sourcing bone? A list of bone-charms with dates beside them, which ended with, _HD__s. Unable to approach. _A list of more dates and numbers and abbreviations, which was indecipherable until a note at the side: _GR recommends __kill__ weepers, feed r__ats __fresh meat__. __J__ess__ w__ould not forgive me. I cannot. I cannot._

It was the most personal communication Daud had ever seen from him. As if Corvo, too, had realized it, the lower half of the page was drowned in ink, and anything that might have been there was unreadable.

Daud flipped backward and examined the list again from the top.

_2 m.W (2 d.o.?) → 40 r → 3 c (27/8)_  
_1 f.W (v. recent), 1 f.W + 1 m.W (1 d.o.) → 55 r (?) → 3 c (28/8)_  
_2 f.W (1 d.o.) → 53 r → 4 c (1/9)_  
_..._

The writing was cramped and small, and the list went on for pages. How many corpses had Corvo fed to plague rats, only to feed them in turn to crows? Daud did not bother to add them up. _Had _he turned to killing them himself? There weren't any more notes indicating either way.

The pages that fallowed alternated: some were pictograms, repeated a dozen times in variations. Others were notes on crows: length and wingspan, weight, health. Occasionally, a mention of origin, by district—how in the Void he'd managed to capture them all, Daud could not imagine and the book did not elaborate. Dissatisfaction writhed through the earlier pages: no change in the crows, or they sickened and died on their diet of plague rats. Then, a discovery—Daud checked the feeding log and found it corresponded: he'd switched to feeding the crows not just rats, but the corpses themselves. Those fed solely on weeper corpses underwent strange mutations, seemingly overnight; those fed a mix also grew monstrously larger by the day. Some developed additional eyes; others, second beaks or additional limbs, like fins. In the largest, the teeth fell out. Corvo had circled that entry: the crow so described possessed a wingspan of nearly five feet. The unlucky specimen that had ended up on the altar?

Now the pages turned entirely to diagrams: the ritual, over and over, interspersed with cryptic clues:

_E cries at night. _

_Cannot support fifth cycle._

_Demand of blood too much?_

_Symbolism secondary to intent; no formula exists—do not forget! _

_Fly, my love. Would that I could give you the vessel you deserve. <strike>Could the Outsi DAMN HIM</strike>_

The last dozen pages were blank, but pressed between them were a few more scraps. A note from Vera—but not to Corvo: to her old apprentice. A note Daud had written Burrows, demanding more money for the complications of the job, _that_ job, and Daud could barely remember the person he'd been when he'd written it, the world just beginning to crumble beneath his feet. A note from Campbell—_after_ his branding and disappearance, cursing Corvo. A larger page, folded over many times, so water-damaged that its folds were glued together and Daud could not avoid ripping it in places: but when he finally had it unfolded the word _DADDY_ was still legible at the top. The face beneath, however, was ruined.

Daud folded it back up with great care, and spent some time cursing Corvo Attano, and witches, and all conspirators, Burrows in particular, the Outsider, and the whole damned isle. And himself, longest and most heartfelt of all.

  


  


He dozed. In his dreams Corvo's blade flashed down, down, down and never reached its mark. Daud looked into the inhuman mask of his killer and knew that beneath it lay only the Void.

He woke to hands around his throat, strangling him.

Daud gasped, grabbed his attacker's hands, got his hand around a thumb and yanked. The grip broke—it was barely a grip at all—and Corvo nearly fell on top of him. Daud grabbed him, wrestling him up and trying to get him into a secure hold. It was complicated less by Corvo's attempts to escape him than by Corvo's inability to stand on his own. They wound up on the floor, Corvo flat on his back, left arm pinned beneath his own body and Daud pinning his right, with all of Daud's bodyweight holding him down.

Corvo's expression was not blank now. Reason and control had been thrown out the window: he stared up at Daud with a burning mix of terror and madness.

“Settle down,” Daud ordered. It made no dent. “If you're going to cut my throat, I insist you at least be sane for it.”

Corvo's breathing was near to hyperventilation—it had already been fast, thanks to the blood loss. Daud suspected that if they just sat here long enough Corvo would pass out again all by himself. But that would probably not be good for him, so, carefully keeping leverage, Daud transferred his grip on Corvo to free his own left hand, and tugged at the arcane bond.

Rinaldo appeared, sword jumping into his hand and vanishing again a moment later. “Ah. This looks awkward.”

“Don't be a twit. Help me get him back to bed before he does something else stupid.” But Corvo seemed to be regaining some semblance of sanity at last; his breathing was slower, too. Still too fast, but it would be until he'd healed. “If I let you up, are you going to try to strangle me again?”

There was, of course, no response. Because the bastard could draft a hundred page security bill but wouldn't deign to nod his head. Why _had_ Daud expected sanity from him?

He would settle for functional madness. Slowly, Daud loosened his grip, and Corvo let his hand fall as soon as Daud released it. Neither movement nor murder was immediately attempted, so Daud climbed off of him, then watched Rinaldo struggle to get Corvo to his feet. Without the madness that had driven him earlier, standing seemed to be beyond Corvo; he got to his knees and then stopped cooperating, huddled in on himself and staring at his coat where it lay draped near the piles Daud had made of his weaponry and curios.

There was something almost visceral about the way his attention fastened to it. Daud waved at Rinaldo to stop and crossed the room, snagged the coat off the chair, and dumped it in front of Corvo, who immediately started going through the pockets with shaking hands. Daud watched him, considering the way his motions became more frantic with every pocket that turned up empty. Was he looking for the book? But he'd started with the outer pockets. Unless he'd just lost track of the multitude of crap he carried around.

“Everything that was in your pockets is on that table,” Daud said, and held up the book. “Aside from Campbell's journal. And this.”

Corvo gave it barely a glance.

“We found you in a ritual circle. Old magic. Bone magic. You'd bled yourself out over one of your birds”—Corvo's head snapped up. “I get how you were creating them.” Daud waved the book. “What I don't get is what the fuck you were trying to do with that... thing you made on the altar.”

Corvo's eyes could have bored holes through steel. Daud slapped the book down, exasperated. “It's still there, if that's what's chasing you. I wasn't about to—Corvo—”

Apparently it _was_ what had him so frantic; Corvo slumped, eyes slipping closed, and then he lost his balance and toppled sideways. Rinaldo and Daud both grabbed him, Corvo's own efforts to right himself more hindrance than help, and the two of them dragged him up and over to the bed.

“Rest, damn it,” Daud told him. “Your Empress will want to see you in the morning, if you still give a damn about that.”

A flicker of expression that could almost be regret; Daud breathed a little easier as Corvo collapsed into the pillows. But he would still keep on watch during the Empress' visit.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Daud gets exactly what he wants and immediately has Regrets.

The next morning, the Empress decided that if her Lord Protector could not come to breakfast with her, then she would bring breakfast to him—a last-minute security nightmare that revealed exactly where Corvo was staying to anyone who was watching, much to Daud's dismay. They'd have to move him, and Daud would have to move, too. It was worth it for the way Emily lit up when Corvo awoke for a few minutes, long enough for them to share a tearful (on Emily's part) hug, while Daud stood by with her entire security team ready to throw tethers. Just in case.

Last night's madness, fortunately, made no reappearance.

Corvo dozed off again as soon as Emily finished coaxing him to drink a remedy, despite the amount of caffeine Daud knew was in them. She fretted that he hadn't eaten anything, but Callista assured her he would be well taken care of, adding a glare at Daud to make it clear whose job that would be. Daud returned it with equal irritation—he was the one who'd slept in a chair these past nights.

Predictably, Emily wanted to have her lessons next to Corvo, but Callista pointed out that Corvo needed his rest, and was less inclined to fold to pleading than Corvo himself was. The girl wouldn't use her rank to override her tutor, so the belated breakfast ended not long after, with Emily admonishing Daud to under no circumstances let her Lord Protector come to harm, at all, from anyone.

Daud made no impossible promises. He simply bowed, accepting both the task and the price of failure.

He spent the morning on Corvo's journal, putting the book aside for the occasional report. Corvo had not been seen in public and a substantial portion of the nobility was convinced he had not been found at all. It seemed a less immediate problem than trying to decipher the purpose of a pictograph of a bird—not a crow but a raven, with those extra claws—devouring the innards of a rat, while failing to notice the serpent rearing up behind it.

Half the glyphs that circled the pictographs, he barely remembered—but they came back to him. _Transmogrification. _He thought he was beginning to get a picture. He was not looking forward to sneaking into Empress Jessamine's tomb to confirm it, though.

Not just for the obvious reason. No, it felt too... common. Jessamine's death had cracked an Empire; that her grief-stricken lover (and surely, Corvo was) should attempt to resurrect her in some macabre fashion felt almost trite, in comparison. A bad love story. A standard cautionary tale about witchcraft. A cruelly selfish desire, from a man whom Daud had thought _breathed_ devotion—and not in the cluelessly self-centred way of the Brisbys of the world.

He thought he might be _disappointed_ in Corvo, if he was right.

One of Sokolov's assistants showed up poking around; Daud threw him out. The second time he showed up, his exit was from a second-story window. After that it was quiet, and Daud worked through lunch. Corvo did not stir. In early afternoon, the next disaster struck.

It announced itself on his doorstep in the form of a breathless Cassia, spitting out, “We got jumped. Julian is dead. Rulfio's gone. That thing on the altar is, too.”

Daud rose to his feet, cursing. “Who?”

“No one saw. Fog came up, cut our sight-lines. We were repositioning when we all heard Julian screaming. Rats—a huge swarm, right up on the Void-damned catwalk. He was dead before anyone got close enough to help. When we sounded off, Rulfio was gone.”

Dead, or a traitor—he didn't know which to hope for, anymore. But he knew damn well at whose feet the blame lay. She might as well have sent him an invitation. Daud stalked over to the piles of Corvo's weaponry and purloined several grenades and half a dozen incendiary bolts. A flick of his wrist summoned Rinaldo. “Cassia, get back to your team, tell them to come home. Rinaldo, watch him.”

“Sir—”

“_Go._”

  


  


The route to the Distillery District was nearly the same as the one he'd taken to Lower Packer only yesterday. He should have gone then. He'd put it off for too long.

Vera Moray had not been rich or titled for decades, and had lived in slums for most of that time, but Daud knew her previous haunts, knew her tastes. She liked her space—needed it, for her rituals. She liked access to creature comforts such as running water. She had no compunctions about murdering the existing occupants of any building she liked. And no matter what, she would erect a shrine as soon as possible. Certain madnesses were predictable like that. Daud shifted his vision into Void-gaze as soon as he hit the edge of the district, and let the silent song of distant runes pull him forward.

He found himself before the entrance to the old Bottle Street Gang base, and thought, Of course. The door was unlocked and swung open with a creak at his touch. He did not hesitate before walking through.

Reason did catch up to him inside the yard, and he transversed up to the roof of one of the yard sheds, scouting around the main building more cautiously. Slackjaw's boys had taken reasonable care with their base and none of the high windows were broken—or designed to open. Thwarted, Daud settled for taking a good advance look through the dirty glass. The interior was distinctly _not _so well preserved. It looked like a typhoon had hit it, or a demolitions squad—or a witch. Exposed beams hinted that there had been a second floor, once, but now there was just enough to take the stairs from the ground to the surviving back area. The wreckage of two massive boilers laid piled up against one wall, while the third boiler had been added to, becoming a mountain of misshapen metal. Steam rose from it—no, from behind it. Old pipes still stretched out, haphazard, from supports on the wall. One pipe had been pulled down lower to the ground, and a meat-hook driven into it, from which hung a naked corpse.

The spike was driven through the feet. The body had been hung to let blood drain from the slash at the neck, as one would hang a goat or a cow. The purpose was obvious; below the corpse was a wooden table, with Corvo's dead bird-monster splayed out upon it, as drenched and as unmoving as it had been atop the shrine.

Granny Rags stepped into view from behind the remaining boiler, carrying a cleaver. She tugged on a chain connected to the same pipe, and the whole thing lowered with shuddering slowness. When it was at a height with her, she swung the body round, revealing the slack, white face and the full extent of the bloody gash in the neck. Rulfio.

Daud switched to incendiary bolts, broke the glass with his sword, and started firing.

The first bolt caught the old woman in the back of the neck, a lethal shot even for ordinary bolts. Then it exploded. At the same time, so did Granny Rags: not into fire as Daud would have preferred, but into a tide of flesh and fur, a swarm of rats large enough to devour a small squad.

That was fine. Daud had plenty of bolts. He reloaded and shot steadily, each bolt striking a different point in the swarm and spraying burning whale oil wildly, until the distillery floor was covered in screaming, flaming rats.

Daud chucked a pair of grenades down and hugged the side of the building.

He waited. The twinned explosion rocked the building, but he managed not to fall off. He gave it a second and peered back down at the floor, switching to Void-gaze to pierce the oily smoke from the burning rats—which now littered the floor, fires dying. A few tiny bodies still twitched. Methodically, Daud switched back to hardbolts and shot them, one by one, until he was the only thing left living in the distillery.

He breathed in. Out. Transversed to the factory floor, and across to Rulfio—what remained of him. His body was mainly intact, but one of the grenades had landed too close and his face was no longer recognizable. Daud—looked past him. The bird-thing seemed un-singed. From here he could see what was behind the former boiler: an old claw-footed bathtub, propped over a fire. It was filled with a thick, bubbling green liquid.

On the ground next to the table, not far enough to have avoided splatters of blood, was a heap of dark clothing, a whaler's mask carelessly discarded beside it.

Daud stood there, waiting for the adrenaline rush to fade and wishing for nothing more than to kill the witch all over again, so he could let the ratty screams last longer.

The steam wafting off the bathtub thickened, hanging in the air like haze, and Daud heard the bone-chilling sound of many, _many_ small claws skittering over stone. He whirled. Around him, rats poured out: from the two gutted boilers, the collapsed flooring, the dark places beneath the ruined stairs. Daud raised his hand to transverse but the rats didn't freeze as the world turned grey; nor did the mist, which thickened into all-concealing fog that obscured even his Void-given sight. He completed the transversal blind, turned and transversed again in time to hear crashing metal. The ambient light dropped even further and Daud bit back a curse: that had been the shutters coming down over the windows.

“That was very rude,” said Granny Rags, everywhere and nowhere in the mist. “Look at what a mess you made of lunch! You need to be taught some manners.”

The squeaking and skittering shifted, coming right at him.

Daud hurled a grenade blindly and transversed, trying to find a pipe support from memory and making it on his third try, right as the grenade went off. Below, rats screeched and chattered, well out of range of the explosion. Fuck. This was not how it was supposed to go. He'd known of Vera Moray's power, amassed over a lifetime of devotion to a god who had discarded her as readily as He'd discarded Daud. He'd known it would not be enough to destroy her human form, known about the rats. But he'd destroyed the swarm—had it been enough for even one to get away? Or was this something else entirely?

He dropped a hand to his belt of arc mines and began switching them to kill, mentally reviewing the room. If he couldn't let any rats get away, then he'd just have to be more thorough about it. He had only one incendiary bolt left, but enough mines to make up the difference, if he did this right—and he had more than enough motivation, an ocean's worth to drown in.

Up here, the mist was beginning to clear. Daud could make out other crumbling perches, the remains of the second floor. Yes, he could do this.

The mist continued to thin, until he could pinpoint Granny Rags' direction when she called, “Where are you hiding? Nasty, uninvited guest. You'll scare my birdies.”

Voidlight glimmered in his vision and the ground became clear: swarming with rats, and in the centre of it all was Granny Rags, now neither human nor rat but something in-between. Her back was hunched, her limbs too thick and too short, and my, what big claws you have, Granny. Daud had no desire to get a look at her teeth. He raised his hand toward a place where the horde thinned, instead, and tugged an old bottle into his grasp.

A closer look revealed it to be one of those damn fire flasks Slackjaw's crew had been so fond of. Empty now. Eh, too bad. Daud rose from his crouch and threw it hard, the length of the building. It smashed against the base of the remaining interior wall, and if it had been full, might have caused a small crater. Instead the result was a cry of, “There, my dears! There!” and the roiling, glowing carpet moved _en masse_ toward that side.

Daud transversed from his perch and followed, dropping mines at strategic points near the walls, cutting off escape. He scooped up another old bottle, transversed up and threw it in the other direction. They ran, yet unsuspecting, and he frantically tossed mines, closing the trap—

His last transversal took him right behind her, and he drove his sword into her heart.

There, he thought, as her scream multiplied, and he let a grenade fall at his feet and jumped, straight up. The rush of the Void in his limbs carried him higher than any mortal had a right to expect, and at the apex of his arc he began a transversal and halted, letting himself hang there while Granny's rats, unaffected by his stranglehold on time, piled up below him. If he were to land, they'd have him stripped in seconds.

Instead Daud completed the transversal, landed on top of the boiler, and watched her swarm be blown to pieces. This time, he was less parsimonious in dealing with the stragglers: rather than hardbolts, he chucked grenades, and whatever survivors fled the explosions, the mines turned to ash, until his Voidgaze showed that the only rats remaining were in pieces no bigger than a deck of cards, and as inanimate.

Time to be well away. He was nearly out of explosives of all kinds, and not stupid enough to stick around a second time, not without a chance to restock. Returning to base was out of the question until he was sure, but there were caches he could hit. Daud sprinted up the length of the drooping, groaning pipe, grabbing his last grenade. Not one he could afford to throw—he wedged it carefully into the largest gap in the steel shutters that he could see, then transversed back across the room, pin in hand.

But his new perch betrayed him. What had been broken wood and mortar one moment dissolved the next, into grip-less, blackened Void-stuff that sent him reeling right into the devouring teeth that swarmed up from nowhere.

He shouted; transversed; but some (many) had already sunk teeth into his flesh and came right along with him. He killed three rats with one swipe of his sword but the Void was open beneath his feet once more, full of more scrabbling claws and gnawing teeth, and he'd seen men die like this before, all technique deserting them as they screamed and flailed, while he watched from some perch above—and wasn't it _fitting_, that he should die in such a fashion when he'd nearly watched an Empire die the same way, when he'd been the one to hand it to the rats at the end of a bloody sword?

Then he had no more spare thought for irony, because he couldn't get away from the rats and he was one of those screaming, flailing corpses, and then he was no longer doing that either because a rat-woman had appeared in front of him and raked her claws across his face and gut, and he had to hold in his intestines lest they spill out.

“Shush,” said Granny Rags, and backhanded him with inhuman force.

Lights out.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Daud gets some answers and immediately hates them.

There was blue light all around him, the crisp, eerie calm of the Void.

Daud climbed. In the Void, it was always up or down to reach your destination, and frequently both. He took the path presented, and did not startle when he reached the top to see one of Delilah's statues reaching for him with hands like claws. He stepped around it and went to the shrine.

The Outsider always had to have His say. Might as well get it over with. Daud was tired.

“What was it your mother warned you of, Daud? Never make an enemy of a witch.”

Oh, _fuck_ You, Daud thought, but even now, after all these years, he didn't dare voice the thought outside of his own mind.

“This is your mind, old friend,” said the Outsider. “The Void is everywhere—and nowhere. In the end, your mind shapes all these things... and every piece of who you are. It will be such a shame if you die now, just as you've started filling it up again. But as I've told you before, I don't play favourites.”

The darkness dissolved before Daud could spit, _Liar!_

  


  


Waking up was a pleasant surprise; waking up in chains, less so of either.

Far more unexpected was seeing Corvo Attano's gruesome visage staring down at him. The metal mask would have been kinder on his eyes. Corvo didn't look like death warmed over, but only because the blood loss had made him pale and cold, a frozen corpse huddled into his bloodstained coat. Considering that Daud could have woken up in Granny Rags' bathtub, however, he supposed he should cut Corvo some slack.

“See, there we are, dearie. He's awake—bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for the knife.”

Corvo didn't respond, his expression as blank as a doll's. After a few more seconds, he wandered away.

Daud revised his thoughts towards Corvo to something far less charitable.

“You'll need to cut his throat yourself, dear one. I can't do everything for you. I know it's not your favourite chore, but the spell just won't work without a death. I told you. You don't get something for nothing, no, you don't.”

Painfully, Daud lifted his head. The bar his wrists were manacled to, and the manacles themselves, were from a stockade; ordinarily they'd hold someone on their knees, but Daud's had been secured to the table he was lying on, leaving him face up. He didn't think he could have remained upright on his knees. His gut was a swollen mass of agony, and when he raised his head higher to get a look, he had to shut his eyes against dizziness and nausea. Granny had, apparently, decided to stitch him up: he now resembled something akin to Corvo's cursed bird.

Which was sitting just beyond his feet. He felt it more than saw it, a foul wrongness gnawing at him like a rat at a corpse. A pity it wasn't just a little bit closer. He didn't have the reach to kick it off the table.

“Corvo,” Daud rasped. “At least have the decency... put a sword in my hand before you run me through.”

He had not been so decent to Empress Jessamine, of course. But Corvo—Corvo was supposed to be _better_. He had brought down two coups and spilled barely a drop of blood. Though those fates were hardly to be envied... Perhaps Daud shouldn't have been surprised. Being toyed with and trapped into a witch's soup cauldron was no less than he deserved. He'd fancied a dignified death, but so had any number of men and women he'd killed over the years, and their expectations had served them as little as Daud's did now.

He couldn't say he hadn't known better. 'Never make an enemy of a witch,' as the Outsider had so helpfully reminded him. For fuck's sake, Daud had read the man's spellbook.

Corvo didn't respond to Daud's useless entreaty. Granny did. She shuffled into view from somewhere above Daud's head, out of his range of vision—beside her re-purposed boiler, if his orientation in the room was correct. She carried a small knife with her, one sized perfectly for whittling.

“Once all your blood's run out, I'm going to boil the meat off your bones and carve my prayers into them,” Granny said conversationally. “Your bones will make powerful talismans. Not quite like my black-eyed groom's, no, not with the smell of the ocean depth, but”—she inhaled, a great gulp of air—“something powerful all the same.”

“I hope I corrupt your fucking rune... make you claw your eyes out.”

She laughed, thin and wheezy. “Already tried that years ago. It turned out for the best. My dear one showed me other ways to see. Your bones will, too. Oh—but we'll need the pot ready—and your friend, his bones are ready for the fire. Corvo, dear one, would you fetch some more fuel? We'll need to heat the furnace more. This one's bones aren't as strong as a whale's, but they'll take quite a bit more punishment than some poor street-sweeper. The fire will have to be very hot.”

So that was what she'd done to the boiler—she'd remade it into a curing oven, the kind every slaughterhouse used to have before the Abbey had forbidden them, years ago.

Corvo, Daud saw bitterly, _did_ respond to her direction; he vanished up the stairs. Granny called after him, “The oil's on the left, dear! Beneath the wine. Don't forget.”

She shuffled around the table and picked up a cleaver, beginning to sharpen it with long, rasping strokes. Daud eyed her, though he had to crane his neck awkwardly to do so. He tested his restraints. His arms were going nowhere, and transversing while restrained was impossible, but if he could flip the table he thought he'd be able to get his feet free. If he could throw a tether to pull the knife to his hand...

And then what? He hadn't been able to kill her when he'd dropped a dozen mines, grenades, and incendiary bolts on her; he wasn't going to kill her with a kitchen knife. He hadn't even been able to _escape_ after dropping a dozen mines, grenades, and incendiary bolts on her, and now he was ripped open, chained up, and having difficulty holding his head off the table. If he stabbed her, it would do jack shit. If he summoned a Whaler, he'd just be giving Granny meat for her next batch of soup.

Fuck.

He really wished Corvo would have just killed him weeks ago.

“Why bother... stitching me up?” Daud asked. He had to let his head fall back against the table. Too much work to keep holding it up so he could see her.

“Life's a powerful thing. Haven't you learned that yet, Daud? No point in letting yours run out ahead of time, especially when poor Corvo needs it so, and what kind of Granny would I be if I didn't help such a dear child? I was inclined to be dreadfully cross with him, you know, after what he did to Morris. Dreadfully cross. But then he stumbled into my cottage... oh, no, not this one. Down by a grand whaling refinery, that one was, close to my beloved's bones, but a bit far from the city centre... I do so like to be near the centre of things when I'm planning a party. Where was I?”

Corvo still wasn't back. Maybe he'd gotten lost. Maybe he'd gotten faint from blood loss, fallen, and broken his neck. Daud could dream.

The sound of metal rasping against stone stopped. “Where is that young man? You know, I don't think he looks well today. Though not as bad as on _that_ day, to be sure. He stumbled in, weeping for his lost little girl, eyes all red with tears. So worried about his little Lady Emily. Well, I couldn't just do nothing, not and let that girl stay in the hands of such bad men, now, could I? So I fed him some soup and put him to bed, and that fixed him right up. Soup's the best thing for a nasty cough like that.”

Ah. And Sokolov and Piero thought Corvo merely lucky. But it hadn't been Corvo at all.

_Granny Rags_ had a cure for the plague, and it was cannibal soup. Because of course. This was Dunwall. What else had he expected from this accursed city?

“After he'd acted so _ungrateful_ for his birthday gift, I didn't expect to see him back once he'd returned to his little girl... oh, but I did misjudge him. There he was a few days later, helping me move house, set up the new oven... he's been so handy to have around. Morris never got the hang of calling for my little birdies. Not subtle enough, I think. Corvo, now—he's so quiet, and shy, like they are; I think that's why he gets on so well with them. Hardly ever gets bitten, and if he does, well, he's always got his Granny's soup to rely on, doesn't he? It's the least I can do, when he's being so helpful. I'd wear myself out, I would, if I had to call all my birdies here and send them out by myself. It was so dreadfully tiring before, all by my lonesome. So time consuming. _Boring._”

_Ah. _Of _course_ none of Sokolov's inventions could put a dent in the rat population. Of course.

“You're calling the rats... spreading the plague.” And so he was doubly damned; even if he found a way out of this, he'd felt those teeth gnawing at his flesh...

“I'm just doing my part. You'll tell him that, won't you? My dear, black-eyed groom. You'll be seeing him soon. Oh, _there_ you are, dear. Oh, no, you don't sound well at all. Come, now, put that down and have a rest; I'll get you some soup. I've just made a fresh batch.”

Daud let his head loll to the side, watching as Corvo came slowly down the stairs carrying a full oil tank. He looked as pale as a ghost, and the tank trembled obviously until he set it down and took a seat beside it on the steps. Well, he had barely been able to stand last night. Daud should have strangled him while he'd had the chance.

Granny went over to him, clutching a steaming bowl of soup that she pressed into his hands. His breathing was ragged. “Go on, dear, eat. It's good for you. And you know you need to keep your strength up.”

Corvo raised the bowl to his mouth and drank.

Daud's gorge rose. Damn him. Damn all witches. Damn _him_, for putting a blade through the Empress and shoving her bodyguard's sanity off a cliff.

He considered again the cleaver. Corvo was in bad shape; and he was, hopefully, a long way from being as powerful as Granny Rags. Hopefully, he was not functionally immortal. Daud might be able to catch him off guard and stick the blade through his neck. More realistically, he might at least be able to cut his own throat, and ruin whatever-the-fuck spell they were trying to pull off. Either option required getting his hands free of the bar.

Daud started working at it. A very long time ago in Cullero, he'd slipped free of handcuffs, winning freedom through sheer desperation and a dislocated thumb. But he'd been able to bring his hands together, then, and had a child's flexibility. It had been a very long time ago. His situation now was surely as desperate, but fatigue seemed to have turned his joints dry and leathery. Or maybe that was just getting old.

He tugged and twisted anyway. Nothing better to do. Corvo drained his bowl in silence and stood, much steadier; Daud would probably have to consign his own throat to the knife. The larger part of him rebelled at the idea—he'd always wanted to go down fighting. Watching Corvo move around and plug oil canisters into the furnace, working at it until the blasting heat reached even Daud—watching Granny fish Rulfio's bones out of her bathtub with a ladle and tongs—put things in some perspective.

Still. He couldn't give up yet. He squirmed like a fish on the end of a hook, but he couldn't not. Wasn't like it would be any more dignified to stop trying at this point, not when it was a damned soup-pot awaiting him.

Granny Rags chattered as she worked. Most of it was nonsense, scattered with deadly serious magic as she idly explained a particular stroke of a rune. Corvo said nothing.

“All right, now, that's him gathered up,” said Granny, and Daud cursed because they were making progress and he wasn't. “Let's see if the furnace is good and hot.”

Corvo wandered over to Daud as she went to the great iron monstrosity, cooing at a few bones in her hand. Rib bones, Daud thought. He stared up at Corvo, who wasn't even looking at him. Corvo was looking at the bird-thing, drinking it in with his eyes as though it were Jessamine herself, and the naked grief on his face was so raw that it would have been shocking to see upon any person—Daud had not thought Corvo capable of wearing such emotion, not anymore. He looked as he had in the moment Billy had grabbed Emily—angry, panicking, heartbroken—before Daud had killed the Empress and Corvo's eyes had gone dead.

“Nice and hot,” said Granny, and Corvo's expression shuttered.

There was a long wail of protesting metal as Granny did something to raise the blast door—Daud could feel the sudden scorching heat of it from yards away. He didn't pay it much attention, however, because at the same moment Corvo turned and casually hit the lever for the stockade bar. The restraints around Daud's wrists sprang open, noise covered by the screech of the furnace door, and Corvo walked away to join Granny.

For a moment Daud was immobile, filled with furious bafflement. Then it was just fury, as he realized—fuck, was _this_ what the Outsider found so thrice-damned fascinating about Corvo _fucking _Attano?

He tucked it away and got to work.

The chain wrapping his feet remained, yet—he reached, _there_—he held in a hiss of agony as his shredded muscles protested use, but he managed to curl up enough to grab and unwind it. Then he couldn't move, could only lay there panting as waves of pain washed over him with every breath, but he was free. He had to move, had to—

“Go on, dearie. Toss one in. A little one, to start... that—wait, what was that? What have you—no!”

The furnace door slammed shut—there was a low _whumph_ of further ignition—and Granny was screaming, rage and _pain_, and the sheer bloody joy of hearing that managed to propel Daud to something near sitting.

The air shivered as Corvo and Granny both transversed, very sloppily. Daud saw the ground and thought twice about getting off the table; it was carpeted with rats, pouring after the pair. Another set of transversals, and an explosion—Corvo had dropped a grenade, sounded like.

“I'll mince you up and have you for lunch!”

It hadn't caught Granny Rags. She materialized in front of Corvo—both near the boiler again—and swiped at him with inhuman speed. Corvo transversed twice, scored a gash down her arm that bled thick and red, but he was _not_ on form today, his reactions sluggish. Daud could hear his gasping from here, audible even over Granny's continuous stream of curses.

Daud looked about for a better weapon than the cleaver. Corvo's grenade seemed to have done for the rats—had he actually broken her spell of immortality, somehow? Or was this just another doomed attempt? But if anyone would know how—

Corvo stumbled, and Granny pounced, smashing his sword from his grip and then grabbing onto him bodily, slamming him into the ground. Once, and Corvo struggled feebly. Twice—

The cleaver would have to do. And some careful timing, because Daud was fairly certain he was not able to walk. Or stand. He lined up the transversal—she smashed Corvo down again, and Corvo went limp. Granny stood over him, clawed arm drawing back for a disemboweling strike.

Daud transversed practically on top of her and drove the cleaver through the back of her neck, past the resistance of her spine, and out her throat.

He'd been right: he couldn't stand. Granny gave a gargled scream, and he fell, dragging the cleaver sideways with him before his fingers lost their grip. Granny fell with him, bucking and flailing, and he felt her crude stitch-work strain. His gut was a mass of agony.

If Corvo hadn't done something to kill her, Daud was about to wind up right back on that table. Well, he'd given it his best shot, Daud thought muzzily. One of Granny's flailing limbs cracked him across the face—ah, but it was weak; she didn't lift Daud's weight off of her. Daud couldn't have lifted himself off, either. They all lay there in a pile, and Daud watched as Granny gasped and gurgled around the knife in her throat. The rage on her withered features ebbed into panic.

Corvo, sprawled beside them, didn't move. Daud wasn't certain if he was still breathing.

Damn it. _Damn it_. Corvo had spared Daud again—turned against the mad hag who'd helped him, for the sake of the man who'd driven a sword through the Empress, and sent the world mad. Sent Corvo mad, so that he refused to kill weepers to feed his crows, but called plague-rats to his Empress' city, and trapped his dead love's soul in a construction of vile magic...

And, oh, this was such a stupid idea, but Daud owed a debt that could not be repaid and Corvo had looked at that accursed thing as though it were Jessamine: now and forever trapped in a heart, trapped in a corpse. _Anything _would be better than that. Daud hauled himself up and threw out a hand. He collapsed again a moment later, but his tether had caught the bird-corpse and sent it flying toward him to land atop him and Granny. Massive wingspan—bigger than some ravens. More terrifying than any raven—Daud shoved its limp mass off of him, and tried not to look at the gaps in the stitches down its front, through which that horribly _wrong_ thing might be seen...

What had been done to her was wrong. This might be, too. Even an instant of being so near the thing was enough to convince him of that—it was foul, it was wrong, he could hear it whispering at the edge of his mind—

Daud grit his teeth, summoned his waning strength, and shoved the bird beneath Granny Rag's neck. Then, with numb fingers, he yanked out the cleaver.

Blood poured out, over the crow-thing, over its stitches and onto what lay beneath. Granny gave one last gurgle and went still. There was not so much blood as there might have been, if she'd been hanging from a hook as she'd planned to do to him. He didn't know if it was enough. When the weak gush of blood slowed, nothing had happened.

He didn't have runes or spellwork; he barely had intent, was only guessing at Corvo's. Idiot. Daud groaned, and bit back a curse as he felt warmth of his own trickling down his side—definitely broken stitches. He pressed a hand to the wound and then lifted it clumsily to the bird. Let it feed the whispers.

Glossy, black, _dead_ eyes blinked open. Daud flinched back.

The crow exploded into motion, wings beating wildly as it fought to claw its way out from under Granny. Daud shoved himself away, feeling something else strain and tear as he did, and knew that this time picking himself up was out of the question. The bird screamed, a raw animal sound, but he knew that voice.

_YOU!_

He had heard it in hundreds of city-wide announcements, a lifetime ago.

A heavy weight landed on his chest. Talons dug in. Even as monstrously oversized as it was, it was still only a crow, hollow-boned, and it should not have been so heavy, but it pressed all the air from his lungs.

_AM I MEANT TO FORGIVE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE? _the crow shrieked, with all the rage and fury that she had never been permitted in life.

Daud could not draw breath. The thing he had made loomed over him, dripping blood across his face.

A groan, from beside him. A wrecked, ruined voice—unfamiliar. Daud had never heard him speak before. “Jess...”

The crow's head jerked to face in that direction. Jerked away.

She screamed, and the force of it would have knocked Daud flat if he hadn't already been collapsed in the dirt. Pressure, pressure against him, and the crow launched itself skywards, winging into the air. Upwards. Away. Daud breathed in, and agony rushed in as well, sharp and blinding. Sight dimmed; the crow faded.

“Jess,” he heard Corvo start to say again, but the man's voice broke and failed him.

Daud surrendered to the dark.

  


  


“I once watched you thwart the plans of the greatest witch of your age with consummate grace. I suppose a repeat would have been boring...”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which waking up goes better than the last time (granted, it'd be hard for it to go worse).

Daud woke to hands on his throat and liquid filling his mouth. He gagged, nearly inhaled, and sputtered instead, flailing out with both arms before he managed to swallow, and realized simultaneously that it was barely much liquid at all and also that it had the potently bitter taste of elixir.

“Daud! Sir.” Rinaldo's face loomed into view. “You're awake—drink this.” He held the vial to Daud's lips, supporting both it and Daud as Daud choked it down.

Strength flooded his limbs, and Daud glanced down at himself. His shirt was gone. So were Granny Rags' stitches—much smaller, neater ones had replaced them. Also, this was his room. He was in his bed.

“Report,” he rasped.

“Drink this,” said Rinaldo, shoving another vial at Daud. This one, Daud managed to hold by himself. “I've been trying to get elixir down your throat for the last half hour. Sokolov and Joplin took apart that hack job somebody did on you. You'd already started healing around it—did you drink elixir with that in you?”

“No.” Daud finished the vial, and was rewarded with a third. He glared at Rinaldo, exasperated.

“Gut wounds are nasty,” Rinaldo informed him, as if Daud didn't know that. “Without the Mark you'd be dead in a couple days. You're going to be eating more elixir than food for a while. _Drink._”

Grudgingly, Daud took a sip. “Report about the _situation_, Rinaldo. You were supposed to keep an eye on Corvo.”

“I think he overheard me telling Thomas what was going on. Maybe—half an hour after you left? Don't look at me like that, what was I supposed to do? Thomas went to yell at other people, and next thing I know, I'm waking up with a sore neck and no patient. Thomas was pissed.”

“Where is he now?”

“Still explaining to the Empress, I think. He'll be back to report to you when he's finished.” Another elixir was pressed upon him, but Daud didn't drink right away; he was going to vomit if he filled his stomach with much more of the disgusting stuff. “She came by and was not pleased that we'd lost the both of you. We were already looking by then, but that, ah, sped things up. Anyway, then Vivian spotted that the old distillery was smoking, we went in and found you out cold, Attano staggering around, and a furnace about to melt itself into slag. It exploded, by the way, after we got you out of there. You were in bad shape, we got you back here, and the doctors spent a couple hours picking twine out of you.”

He'd meant Corvo. “And the Lord Protector?”

“Drink that and I'll tell you.”

Daud growled. “Rinaldo...”

Rinaldo didn't budge. Huh. Daud wondered how bad off he'd really been. Everything just vaguely ached, now, like he'd eaten something disagreeable—Daud grimaced, and drank.

Fuck. He'd been bitten by Granny's plague-rats. All this was only going to buy a few more days. Unless... unless Corvo knew how... but his mind shied away from contemplating it.

“Thank you, sir. Attano wasn't much injured, that I know of—I was busy with you. Vivian thought he might have a concussion, but it's hard to tell with him. I did hear him vomiting, but she gave him an elixir and he was fine.”

“Maybe Rulfio disagreed with him.”

“Sir?”

Bitterly, Daud waved off Rinaldo's confusion. “Where is he now?”

“Went off with Sokolov and Joplin when they were done with you.”

“And you _let him?_” Daud swore and sat up the rest of the way, then swung his feet out of bed. It took more effort than it should, but not too much. He stood, and his gut didn't particularly like that but also wasn't going to stop him.

“Sir—he can defend himself—”

“Where'd they go?” A half-hour to Kaldwin's Bridge by rail-car. He went to his wardrobe, staggering only on the first step, and flung it open, grabbing the first shirt and jacket he saw.

“I don't know—”

Daud yanked at the bond, hard. Thomas materialized—mask off, mouth open, looking extremely harried. He had probably just pissed off Emily even more. But if _Corvo_ had not gone to Emily—

Why had he turned against Granny Rags at all? There was an idea coalescing in Daud's head, but it was ludicrous. Far more likely that, having been assisting her in summoning _Void-damned plague rats_, Corvo had lost his mind entirely. Not all madnesses were predictable. Sokolov and Joplin were the best damned hopes the city had, and they had no idea what kind of lunatic they'd invited into their lab. Yet—

“Where's Attano?”

“He left with Sokolov and Joplin for Kaldwin's Bridge, sir.”

Daud snatched the three remaining red vials from Rinaldo's supplies, and two remedies, and stuffed them in his pockets. He didn't bother with weapons before he was out the window and onto the rooftops, transversing south. If was wrong, that would likely get him killed, but at least he had a good chance of being rid of Sokolov, too. Probably he was wrong. It was all just a hunch, pure conjecture built out of the remaining pieces of that pedestal. If he was right—

Sokolov's greenhouse was lit up like a beacon, visible a mile off through the night. Daud made it in far better time than any rail-car could dream of, Thomas right behind him, panting nearly as hard—Thomas had never had as long a transversal range, but Thomas wasn't dealing with a redoubled ache in his gut. Daud threw the door from the balcony open and strode in.

Corvo was slumped in a chair, near Sokolov's desk. One arm dangled limply, and from it tubing coiled down to a clear, stoppered beaker. It was, perhaps, nearing a pint full, with quite a ways to go.

“I really think this is going too far,” Joplin was saying—both he and Sokolov were standing a little further in, squaring off over another beaker arrayed about by bottles of chemicals. Joplin broke off, turning. “Daud!”

“Out,” said Daud. “Both of you. Now.” He strode over to Corvo and checked the seal on the beaker, then lifted it over Corvo's head, letting gravity reverse the flow. 

“This is—”

“Thomas, if they don't leave immediately, throw them out a window.”

The philosophers fled.

Thomas stuck his head out the door, watching, then ventured to Daud's side. “Sir?”

“Hold this up,” Daud grunted, and passed him the beaker. He pulled out an elixir and downed it—he'd already swallowed one on the way over. No matter; Sokolov's lab had a still. But he wasn't Rinaldo, with the knack of nursing the unconscious. Most of his medical knowledge was geared at how to better fuck people up. “Attano, wake up.” He leaned over, pressed his knuckles against Corvo's sternum, and rubbed hard.

Corvo stirred, eyelids fluttering. Daud held the third elixir to his lips and managed to get most of it down his throat. No matter if if his arm healed around the needle, so long as it remained in his vein for now—Daud was far more concerned about the potential organ failure. He dragged Corvo from the chair to the floor; Corvo flailed a bit, but lay quiet when Daud pushed him flat.

“Put that on the desk and go refill these,” Daud told Thomas, handing him the empty vials. He needed another himself. It really had been stupid, rushing over here so fast. His head was killing him from the mana-drain of rapid transversals, and he'd used up both remedies along the way. He didn't have enough left in him to summon Rinaldo.

Booted footsteps on the grating outside, and Rinaldo burst into the room, breathing hard and carrying his kit. He looked about wildly, spotted Daud, and made a beeline for him. “What have you—oh, shit.”

Daud felt himself smile, oh-so-slightly.

It melted away as Rinaldo dropped to his knees beside him, grabbed two elixirs from his kit, shoved one at Daud, and ordered, “Drink. Thomas, get something to raise his feet. Was he just letting them drain him dry?”

Daud shrugged at his incredulity.

“What kind of...” Rinaldo dropped Corvo's wrist and held his fingers to Corvo's throat, instead. “His blood pressure's crashed. He's in shock.” He hesitated. “Sokolov and Joplin—”

“Those fuckwits—”

“No, I mean, they didn't have anything for him yesterday. For blood loss. I don't know...”

“Sokolov's got a still, here. Can we keep enough elixir in him to keep him alive?”

“We can try...” Rinaldo looked at the vial in his hand and the slowly draining beaker on the desk, and nodded. He rose to his feet, uncorked the beaker, and dumped the elixir into it. The two red liquids mingled swiftly. “This might work. Or it might kill him. Probably that.”

Corvo continued breathing—rapid, shallow breaths. Rinaldo handed Daud another elixir, and then a remedy, which thankfully killed his headache. Thomas located a pile of blankets, possibly but hopefully not from the cells Sokolov kept his test subjects in, and dumped them nearby before heading back to finish reporting to the Empress and, probably, deal with whatever new fire had popped up during this most recent absence from the Tower.

Daud stretched himself out on the floor and pulled a possibly plague-infected blanket over his head. “You should know,” he said gruffly. “I got bit. Plague-rats.”

Rinaldo was a silent figure at the window, studying the beaker Joplin and Sokolov had been arguing over. Eventually, he sighed. “I saw the marks. But you haven't shown any of the early symptoms yet. They might not have been—”

“They were.”

Daud fell asleep to the pain in his gut, and the sound of Rinaldo's boots pacing back and forth along the greenhouse floor.

  


  


When Daud woke there was sunlight streaming in through the greenhouse windows, making the air sleepily warm. He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up. His gut protested, as did his joints—he was too damn old to be sleeping on the floor—but there was a vial of elixir sitting beside him, and when he downed it both subsided.

He looked around. Rinaldo was dozing in Sokolov's chair. Corvo had turned into a pile of blankets at some point, from which two black eyes peered out.

Not the crow's eyes, Daud thought, and suppressed a shudder. Corvo's still had their whites, were human yet.

He wondered where the thing had gone. Where she had gone. He felt certain she had not died in the furnace explosion—if she could even die, again. No; she was out there, somewhere...

Tubing still ran from a beaker on the desk, downward, disappearing under the blankets; now the liquid in the beaker was entirely the luminescent red of elixir. Rinaldo must have decided that it was working. And here Daud felt like _he_ had more elixir in his body than blood. Well, Corvo hadn't had to endure drinking the foul stuff.

Corvo blinked. Daud realized he'd been staring.

“If you're determined to kill yourself,” Daud told him, “you get to be the one to inform the Empress. In advance.”

Corvo's eyebrows furrowed into a wince, and he looked away.

After a moment, his voice emerged from the blankets, a little muffled, very quiet. Hoarse. He sounded like it was painful to speak. “How do you live with it?”

Was that a threat, Daud's mind parsed—no. Live with what? The guilt? The half-expectation, every time he went to sleep, that he'd wake with Corvo's sword through his heart? The one was the answer to the other. From the looks of things, he might need to find a new solution. Had Corvo not _realized _he was eating people? Was this sanity slippage in the other direction, or was Daud letting himself get too attached to hope?

“Why were you even...” Daud let himself trail off.

Corvo closed his eyes and didn't answer. Fair enough; stupid question. He'd helped Vera Moray because Vera Moray knew death from both sides, because Vera had told him how to bring his love back, even if only in the form of a bird. Better to ask why he'd released Daud. Better to ask himself what the fuck he'd been thinking, to complete the ritual—except it had already felt too late at that point: he had felt the wrongness, seen how trapped she was, and he could not bear to simply leave her within a bloating corpse. At least with the spell completed, she could fly.

It was the least he owed her.

Daud shoved aside his blanket and stood, stretching and rolling his shoulders. He looked over to find that Rinaldo had woken at some point during the brief conversation and was watching. Well. Conversations to have at another time, or maybe never.

“I spoke with Sokolov,” Rinaldo said quietly. “In generalities. _If _you were infected—and I'm not convinced you were, sir—you won't be contagious for a few days yet. When you start to cough blood, you are. It's the blood that carries it, so make sure to keep your mask on and don't cough on anyone accidentally.”

Better make the most of these last few days, then. “I'm going back to the Tower,” said Daud, and made his escape.

On the trip back, a black form followed him, high overhead. At such distance, it could have been any dark-feathered bird. Daud knew better.

He arrived to find the Tower in a grim state of unhappiness, servants and guards tiptoeing about their masters. Lady Chancellor Boyle had returned from the morning session of Parliament in a foul mood: her bill hadn't passed. An emergency meeting of the Royal Council had been called, and Sokolov had been heard shouting behind closed doors. Before Daud could find out if anyone knew _what _he had been shouting about, his own arrival was marked, and he found himself summoned into the presence of the Empress.

She was done up as if for court, immaculate in white. Daud spared a thought to hope that she had not gone to Parliament with Waverly; if a bill she so favoured was voted down in her very presence, then things were bad indeed. Then he had no more time to worry about wider politics, as the Empress raised her hand and said, “Leave us.”

Callista protested, as did her uncle. The maids dared not, and filed out.

“Majesty—”

“If he wanted to kill me, you wouldn't be able to stop him. Leave us.”

“But, Empress—”

“It's my command.”

They left. Daud followed them with Void-gaze until he saw them pass the antechamber. When two sets of doors stood between them and eavesdroppers—and there were Galia and Tynan on the garden balcony, keeping watch on the outside—Daud turned to her with eyes as black as the Void.

The Empress of the Isles met his gaze and held it, uncowed.

“Tell me. Everything.”

He hesitated. He didn't know what she already knew; he didn't even know what Thomas told her. “Corvo—”

“Corvo wants to protect me. He's Lord Protector.” She resettled herself in her chair. “But I'm Empress. I don't... I can't be protected from knowing things. Burrows... he'd do things he thought were right and not tell my mother, until it wasn't about protecting her or the Empire at all. Waverly thinks the spymasters had been doing that for a long time. So does Lady Priddleton.”

The finance minister? Damn. Daud was going to have to rewrite her file. Or tell Thomas to do so, anyway. If Thomas chose to stay in the Empress' employ.

“I'm not my mother,” said Emily, and no—Jessamine had never looked so merciless. “You'll tell me everything.”

He told her everything.

She didn't interrupt. At several points her eyes widened, or filled with tears, but she dashed those away with an angry hand and glared at him until he continued. By the time he finished, he already regretted it. She didn't look like an Empress any longer; she looked like a scared little girl whose mother he had killed.

They were one and the same, he reminded himself. And he was hardly going to be able to protect her much at all, soon.

She sat there, trembling, and took several gulping breaths. “I don't—” Her voice broke. “I need to think. Just—just stay there.”

Daud stayed, mute and unmoving. He checked for eavesdroppers. He reworked guard shifts in his head, and made a mental list of how many of his people might stay, debated on which ones he might convince to change their minds. Anything, to avoid looking at the girl as she quietly cried.

At last she stopped. She dabbed at her face with her handkerchief, although her sleeves were already damp with tears, and blew her nose. A little wetly, she said, “I want—I want to be sure. I want to know from him. You'll ask him. About—about the plague, and if he was... if he was killing people. How many. And the rats. And my mother. Ask him. And you'll check her tomb, if she's been des—desecrated.”

“I'm not sure he's capable of answering.”

“Well, try. Your last service to me.” She bit her lip. “You'll tell him he's not to do any of it, any more. He's—he's to help Piero. You too. But he's not to hurt himself. He's not allowed to—to leave my service, like that. Or at all.”

“As Your Majesty commands.”

“Everyone will want to kill him, if they find out,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“The Royal Council wants to give him to Sokolov already.”

Sokolov was going to live long enough to cure the plague, and not a minute longer. Thomas would do Daud that favour, at least.

“I can't—lose him. Not, not like Mother. But he—he—I don't want to see him.”

Ah. There it was. It hung in the air between them; she looked terrified that she'd said it at all.

Daud let it sit. He'd had many clients that wanted to justify to him what they were doing, over the years, and some who wanted him to provide the justification. He never had. He would not start now, even for her, even for something far less than murder (if he could keep Corvo and his deathwish apart). It would do the Empress no good.

He'd sworn himself to her because she was her mother's daughter, but he could see in her, at times, the potential to be far more than that.

Times like now, when her trembling lips firmed. She drew herself up, sat straighter. There were tear-stains on her face, but she ignored them. Her chair became once more a throne.

“You'll watch him, and keep him safe, for as long as you can,” commanded the Empress.

Daud bowed.


	15. Chapter 15

Daud went from his audience with the Empress to Corvo's office, intending to summon Thomas and set things in motion. Instead he froze on the threshold. Corvo's window had been shattered, and amongst the broken glass perched a monstrously large crow. He could almost see the thing behind the stitches, near to bursting free. Revulsion swept over him.

He mastered the urge to gag, stepped inside, and pulled the door shut. A breeze ruffled the papers on Corvo's desk. Daud stared at them—it was easier on his stomach.

_I went to Corvo,_ she whispered. _He wept to see me, and could not understand my words. What have you done?_

“I wanted to free you.” The words tasted vile on his tongue. Excuses counted for nothing.

_So did he. Instead you have stolen me away once more._ Her wings beat, driving forward the unnatural feeling as though it were a physical stench. _Look at me!_

Daud tried and at once regretted it; he shut his eyes. Vertigo sent him stumbling against the wall. “I can't deny you deserve the chance to send me to the Outsider's hell,” he managed.

_Why am I like this? What went wrong? I cannot see... the Lady Emily like this. I dare not. Even the gulls fly screaming from me!_

“I don't know. The... your heart. When the stitching reveals it—some things, beyond mortals...”

His words were not quite making sense. Nothing could, with her in the room; he could feel it working on him with every passing minute. Was this what it was like to be one of the unMarked, caught by the siren song of a rune? No, Daud had seen how such artifacts of the Void could cause the minds of ordinary men to degrade, but that took days, at least. How much power had Corvo and his tutor poured into this, that he could feel it clawing away his sanity even now?

The lifeblood of a Marked, and one shadow-bonded to a Marked. A gift of blood from Daud himself, and Corvo had done his best to bleed out over it, too. And a mountain of weeper-corpses, meticulously logged. Perhaps more...

_Jess would not forgive me,_ Corvo had written. _I cannot. I cannot._ But he'd been the one making the weepers, hadn't he? Calling the rats. He'd been behind all of it all along. Had he _planned _this, to force Daud to finish the ritual, and drag him down into the same madness? Why else would he have—

_You will fix this_, the crow said decisively. Its wings beat the air once more—and then it was gone, its malevolent presence fading from the room like a passing cloud.

Daud dared open his eyes. The crow was gone, and without its bulk blocking the window, the breeze had sent several papers flying. Daud inhaled deeply, letting the fresh air fill his lungs and imagining, hoping, it might clear out his brain as well. That was... a problem. His problem, it seemed.

Maybe he'd be able to drag the details of the ritual out of Corvo. For all that he'd hedged with Emily about the likelihood of getting answers, it seemed Corvo _did_ talk, now. From the twisted turn his own thoughts took when the crow was near, Daud suspected that was not unrelated—in which case he needed to act fast, if it planned to check up on his progress. Plague-ridden he might be, but he had no intention of going mad.

Neither had Corvo, probably. Though love was a funny thing. Perhaps he'd laid down his sanity gladly.

Daud shook the thought away, crossed the room, and drew the heavy curtains before the breeze could carry a paper away entirely. Other tasks pressed upon him right now, and he couldn't neglect them, either.

Hashing everything out with Thomas took a while; Thomas seemed filled with some naive hope that Daud could be cured. Annoying as it was, Daud didn't have the heart to tell him the particular requirements of the only cure he knew of. Granny Rags was dead, anyway, and Corvo—well. Who knew what Corvo would do.

At least Thomas had his thumb on all the other recent catastrophes. Waverly's bill had been defeated due to a sudden abandonment by Lord Estermont. He had not simply been bought by Ramsey's crowd: early that morning a contingent of Overseers had arrived at his estate, and they'd had their damn boxes going near his study ever since. Misha had managed to sneak in anyway, but had been unable to eavesdrop or to find any incriminating information written down. Thomas, better at sneaking and more resistant to the boxes, planned to go himself as soon as Daud was back on his feet, and Daud shrugged approval.

“Even if I can't find anything, sir, I've bribed some of the servants. But it will be several days before we see results from that.”

“If the Abbey is moving against the Crown...”

“Yes, sir. Quinn broke the cipher on Campbell's book, but she says it's slow going translating it all.”

Daud grunted. He needed to shake answers about that out of Corvo, too. If Corvo had been fucking around with the Abbey—sooner, rather than later. Of course, everything had to be sooner rather than later, now.

And that brought him back to the problem of carrying out his Empress' expressed wishes.

A message to the Lord Protector informing him that he was to stay away from the Empress would produce the exact opposite effect; this would have been true even if it had been written in her own hand. But Emily had said only that _she_ didn't want to see _him_: still a tricky message to convey, but doable. Daud sent Misha and Aiden, the message entirely verbal, not to be trusted to paper: the Empress wanted her Lord Protector under house arrest long enough to actually recover, assisting Joplin in the meantime, and if he insisted on breaking it he would at least do Daud the service of not letting her find out. He was also, by imperial decree, not to allow Joplin to kill him—which part earned Daud a pair of startled looks from his messengers.

“Don't let him kill himself, either,” Daud said shortly, and as an afterthought, “Or you. I'll be by later to talk to him. Follow him until then.”

They saluted and vanished. If Corvo had already left Kaldwin's Bridge—if he'd fucking vanished again—Daud would track him down and stick _him_ in a stockade for a while. That'd keep him put. Maybe.

“Now. Sokolov.”

Thomas winced.

Sokolov's rant to the Royal Council—about Corvo's resistance to the plague, and about Daud himself—had indeed been overheard by guards standing outside. Rumours were spreading like wildfire.

“Fortunately, sir, they seem to have gotten pretty garbled. There's not much credence given to the idea anyone might be immune to the plague, even if it is Lord Attano. Most people seem to think it's that Attano has the plague and Sokolov's refusing to treat him, and has threatened to hire you, or thinks you've been hired to kill him.”

As far as Daud had been able to determine, Sokolov's antipathy for Corvo had nothing to do with Jessamine's murder, Sokolov's support for Burrows, or Corvo kidnapping him. They'd appeared to get along fine in Daud's early days working around the Tower. That had ended the moment Corvo banned Sokolov from using random civilians grabbed off the street as test subjects—something to do with security concerns. Sokolov had protested to the Empress, the Empress had been predictably horrified and sided with Corvo, and then she'd gone one step further and banned Sokolov from experimenting even on convicts, forcing him to work only with those who were already sick. Sokolov considered this not only an outrageous hindrance in his quest for a cure, but also, apparently, a crime against the scientific method, and had railed against Corvo at length and high volume: a much safer target than Emily herself. The whole Tower knew of his grudge. Probably the whole city did.

“Him being thought sick isn't the worst outcome. Easily disproved, at least.” The trick would be getting Corvo out in public without being in Emily's company. Him being sick was the same as him being missing: both weakened her. They were back where they'd been a few days ago, but at least now they had a Lord Protector to produce and it was only the timing they had to worry about. And Corvo's sanity.

Other matters. The budget was the important one that they kept circling back to: it would become a problem very rapidly unless Waverly found a way around it. The military and the guards would follow the Crown so long as the Crown could pay them; the nobles were all waiting to see how the Crown handled this challenge. All except Estermont's group, of course. Doubtlessly Waverly was already cooking up plans on how to handle the matter, but she might be pleased to accept assistance in her revenge. They'd need all the good-will they could get, soon.

“Alright.” Daud waved him off. “Go. Keep me apprised of what you find.”

“Sir... about Rulfio—”

Daud felt his expression flatten. “He's dead.”

“We couldn't locate a body before we had to evacuate the distillery.”

Corvo must have moved the bones. More answers to try to drag out of him. “He was dead when I got there. Very dead. It was Granny Rags.” And then Corvo had—but Corvo _hadn't_ killed Rulfio, no matter what he'd done after.

And who was Daud to take issue over how a corpse was treated? It had been fucking _practical_ of Corvo. Rulfio would have—well, he'd have tried to gut Corvo for doing it to _him_, but he wouldn't have hesitated if he were the one in Corvo's place. Daud was being an idiot, dying of plague and feeling squeamish about a cure. It was a stupid place to draw a line. Stupid, and it rankled to find he'd drawn the line unthinkingly, and yet _also _rankled that he might yet step over it himself, if given the opportunity.

Thomas hadn't noticed his abstraction, and was still talking. “...her old apartments were abandoned. I didn't realize she'd moved right into the distillery. Sir, if she thinks we burned her out, then she may be looking for retribution. We can set a trap—”

“No need. She's dead, too.”

“Her body wasn't there either, sir.”

“If we're lucky, Corvo dumped them both in the furnace.”

“Sir?”

Daud sighed. “If we're unlucky, he'll be wearing new bone charms soon.”

Thomas' face did something complicated that Daud didn't feel up to deciphering. “Sir, if we should be taking additional precautions...” He flushed as Daud raised an eyebrow at him. All of Thomas' lines of sentries had been no use against Corvo in Rudshore; but then, Daud had handicapped Thomas from the start by telling him to toss Corvo in that flimsy hole instead of clapping him in a stockade. Not that they'd had a stockade available.

He took pity on Thomas, and said, “I'll be watching him personally for a while.”

“Sir...”

“Worried for me, Thomas?”

Thomas flushed again. Sometimes Daud forgot how young he was. Billie had never been so young—ten years old and she'd already been a cynic, worldly-wise.

And now he was getting maudlin. “Anything else?”

“Just this, sir.” Thomas produced a vial of elixir and held it out expectantly.

Rinaldo must have gotten to him. Or Thomas had gotten to Rinaldo. Daud took the vial and downed it without comment, but it did make it easier to stand, after, while Thomas vanished out the broken window. Daud twitched the curtain back into place and considered it. Someone was going to have to fix that—but not him. He spared a few minutes to shove Corvo's papers into few enough piles that his paperweights could cover them, then left for warmer destinations.

Guards stood outside the antechamber to the Chancellor's office. Daud took the outer route instead, transversing behind the guard on the balcony and slipping in through doors that opened on well-oiled hinges. Ah, the weaknesses of the rich and idle. Daud paused to look through walls and listen, waving off the Whaler on duty doing the same. Soon enough they'd all have to get used to doing that, and everything else, without the benefit of their shared Mark. Soon enough—but Waverly didn't need to know about that. Not yet.

The cluster of aides he'd expected were notably absent. Only one other woman sat with Waverly, both of them in armchairs, sipping from tumblers.

“...not as if the dear sisters are going to give me pointers.” Waverly's guest sounded piqued. Also, tipsy.

“I was hardly suggesting—”

“It's not as if you're doing any better. Relying on _men_ to find her. Oh, curse him—if he hadn't taken it—”

“Lydia—”

“—but outright _giving _him the second—it was mine! You had no right, and without it—”

“Without it we need fear the Overseers considerably less. Would you have preferred Hiram's searchers find it?”

“You could have buried it.” Lydia's voice was petulant.

“I wanted to be thorough.”

“You always do. Did.”

“Not this again.”

“How you can stand to even be in the same room as him—”

“I will do as I must. If that means standing and smiling in the presence of Corvo Attano then so be it. We won't survive the fall of Dunwall, Lydia.”

“We could get out. Past the blockade.”

“Ha. Lord Percival's skiff was bombed out of the water last night; did you know? His cousins were called to identify the body.”

“It's not without risk.”

“Far more risk for Juliet. She's too sickly.” There was the sound of clinking, a glass refilled. “If you cannot stand it here anymore, I will arrange passage for you. You can search for Esma beyond Dunwall. But I'd appreciate it if you stayed until after the party.”

“Even if I throw my drink in that blackguard's face?”

“Even so.”

Silence.

“I couldn't convince you to come with me, could I?”

More silence. A sigh.

“Very well. I suppose I must also remain. Family must stick together.”

“...Thank you, sister,” Waverly murmured, voice very low.

Daud stepped into the open doorway, where he would be visible, and trod forward on silent feet; the Chancellor's offices were thickly carpeted. He was barely ten feet away before either of the Boyle ladies noticed him, sunk in their own thoughts as they were. To their credit, neither screamed. Waverly's eyes widened, and Lydia fumbled her glass, but no whisky spilled.

“Spymaster,” said Waverly. “You're looking well. Come, shift a chair closer. We're toasting our sorrows.”

Daud raised one eyebrow at the title but let it pass. Shifting a chair closer would have meant sitting in a plush chair with his back to the door; he opted to remain standing, but unbent enough to fetch himself a tumbler and pull down his mask. A few days yet, Rinaldo had said. The whisky was well aged, peatier than he'd have pegged Waverly as liking, but then usually when he saw her drinking anything it was well-watered wine.

“To your budget,” said Daud, and they all sipped.

“To Corvo Attano,” said Lydia. “Couldn't even manage to die from the damn plague.”

“To Talmedge Estermont,” said Waverly. “Perennially unable to pick a side. Well played, my lord.” She sighed. “Maybe if we're lucky he'll say something stupid at the party and Corvo will challenge him to a duel.”

“Maybe they'll both shoot each other,” said Lydia.

Doubtful. And Corvo would survive it, anyway. “Estermont can't actually be stupid enough to insult the Empress in front of her Lord Protector.”

“It wouldn't need to be for the Empress' honour, necessarily,” said Waverly. “Corvo can champion who he likes—traditionally, it shows favour from the Crown. He duelled Montgomery Shaw at our last party, on behalf of that little weasel Pendleton. Shot the pistol right out of his hand—and most of his hand off, too. Lord Shaw had to get it amputated. He has the most gruesome hook, now.”

Daud considered. He'd been aware of the planned party in a vague way—it had been on the Empress' schedule, and all of the Empress' public appearances were his business—but it had gotten pushed to the back of his mind. He'd viewed it as a security concern and a chance to eavesdrop and rifle through empty offices; this might be more active mischief. But then, the party's purpose had of course diverged from Waverly's original intention of celebrating her newly expanded budget.

“Overcomplicated. We have evidence he was considering treason.”

“Only circumstantial evidence. At this point it would look staged. But yes, I am considering it. It would be so much neater if he were to discredit himself in public and then conveniently die, though.” She smiled and took a sip of the whisky, gauntlet laid down.

Heh. At least it might make the party more entertaining. Maybe he wouldn't be coughing by then. “I'll see what I can do.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Corvo reveals he does actually know how communication works. Sorta. A little bit.

Working out of Kaldwin's Bridge was fucking annoying. Daud put up with it solely because of Sokolov's personal library. The relative immunity from the Abbey conferred by the title of Royal Physician had allowed him to amass a large number of rare texts and journals over his life, and it was much safer to leave them in his house than move them to the Tower. The crow had not yet returned to haunt Daud's windowsill, but every time he chanced the balcony, he could see it circling, far above.

Otherwise, being there was a pain in the ass. He was further from the Tower, further from the Estate District, further from everything else he was trying to keep an eye on. He was forced to put up with, or at least actively avoid, two insufferable idiots who fancied themselves geniuses. And he was stuck trying to keep track of Corvo Attano, who'd made one career out of fading into the woodwork and then a second out of just fucking disappearing—but now, for some reason, left off that last step.

For all his words to Thomas, Daud hadn't actually expected that. But it didn't make pinning Corvo down for a conversation any easier.

After the first day—when Rinaldo had finished filling Corvo's veins with elixir and Joplin had finished collecting his samples—Corvo had, against all expectation, _not_ snuck into the Tower to see his Empress was fine. He didn't go anywhere. It made Daud uneasy. He'd never considered that Corvo might totally abandon his Empress to the care of lesser guards. If she was no longer first in all his priorities, then what was?

With great reluctance, but knowing that to do otherwise would be to waste everyone's time and patience, Daud had told Sokolov and Joplin of Vera Moray's cure, omitting only Corvo's later involvement. Predictably, the ghoulish nature of it did not phase the pair, only the practicalities of duplicating it and modifying it for mass production—because Empress Emily was certainly not about to allow them to kill half her people to save the other half. Daud was not certain she'd allow any ratio except zero.

“The girl needs to learn to accept sacrifices,” Sokolov grumbled.

The philosophers' attempt to question Corvo on his knowledge of Vera's work produced nothing. They asked questions; Corvo stared at them mutely. There was some shouting, to no effect. Eventually Corvo got up and left. Daud found him later in the sub-basement, watching the great wheels turn.

“For fuck's sake,” said Daud. “I can't even hear myself think, down here.”

Corvo looked at him blankly. Possibly as if he had heard something idiotic.

...Yeah, that was probably the point. If Corvo even had enough thoughts left in his head to put together a point.

“The Empress has forbidden you to leave her service,” Daud said harshly. Rulfio's white face loomed in his memory. “Either break your word to her, or don't. But at least fucking pick one.”

The next morning, he awoke to a pair of pages left beside his pillow. The first had a list of ingredients—river krust acid, whale blood, dead men's teeth... herbs, some described only by appearance or smell. Rats. Quantities were uncertain. The second page was a diagram, more complex than anything Daud had ever attempted. Apparently many parts were beyond Corvo, too; it was covered in question marks and vague smudges. Daud knew enough, however, to recognize transmutation when he saw it. And there'd certainly been plenty of circles drawn with blood in Granny Rags' lair.

He left it with the philosophers. Let them argue over it. His own research gave him enough of a headache, and they didn't have a spy ring to run.

Gallingly, the vital information from Estermont's estate was uncovered not by any of his people, but by Waverly's; she sent a courier to the Bridge with the news. A ship from Serkonos had docked the night before the vote, with visitors who went straight by private carriage to Estermont's manor and had remained cloistered there since, except when they met with Estermont's Abbey visitors. The servantry was abuzz with gossip over who it might be—no one was permitted in their rooms.

Thomas finally found a way in, and returned sounding like he'd been concussed, with a deep cough after so much low-grade exposure to Holger's devices. “They're sisters of the Oracular Order,” he said hoarsely. “Even Estermont's not sure why they came to him—traded on his sister's name to get lodgings with him, but they've got to want him for more than that. They could have stayed at the Abbey.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Daud said, frowning. He'd gotten Quinn's report four hours earlier. Before deciding to open a vein over his dead Empress' heart, Corvo had been wrecking merry havoc on the Abbey—many of his notations on Campbell's entries were along the lines of, _Planted in Remus' bunk_, or, _Left for Harcross to discover_. He'd also had a running tally of who seemed most likely to succeed Martin, crossed off one by one. Considering what entries Campbell had on them all, it was hard to blame him.

But that was nearly a week out of date by now. Half of Corvo's remaining list might already be eliminated, with new contenders in their places. And if the sisters had decided to take their brothers in hand, the situation in the Abbey might stabilize in a very unfortunate direction.

This, however, still didn't have an easy solution, because the Abbey remained a fucking impenetrable fortress, with those damn music boxes grinding away at every corner. Yet...

“Attano must have a way of getting in and out, sir,” Thomas murmured deferentially. As if he didn't know exactly what was eating at Daud.

But it wasn't like Daud's misgivings made the point go away.

“If we start fighting, keep your bolts to yourself,” he told Thomas.

He found Corvo on the roof, where he'd been nearly all day—Daud had gotten into the habit of scanning for him every few minutes after the first evening, when he'd looked up from a book to find Corvo five feet away, staring silently at him. It wasn't that he didn't expect Corvo to kill him someday, if the plague didn't get him first—but there were limits.

Corvo was crouched by a gargoyle at the roof's edge. Suspicious, Daud scanned the sky, but there was no sign of the crow. He turned to study Corvo instead. The elixir transfusions had restored colour to his complexion; he was certainly capable once more of trailing along after the Empress, even in secret. That he wasn't made Daud far more nervous than his peekaboo routine.

“How are you getting in and out of the Abbey?”

Corvo didn't answer, didn't react in any fashion for long enough that Daud began contemplating shoving him off the roof. Finally, though, he rasped, “Rats.”

It occurred to Daud that if Corvo still sounded this bad after having half his blood replaced with elixir, he might have some kind of permanent damage to his throat. Which did not make him any less of an uncommunicative bastard. Daud knew damn well how literate he was.

Rats. What did that mean? Summoning a horde might be a distraction, but... “You can turn into rats? Like Granny Rags?”

Corvo tipped his head to the side and back. Not a nod, not a shake of the head. More like a shrug.

What the fuck was that supposed to mean?!

After a moment, Corvo added, “Crows, sometimes.”

“You can turn yourself into crows.”

No reply.

For fuck's sake. “The Abbey seems to be pulling itself together in your absence,” Daud informed him. “Were you planning on doing something about that?”

Corvo shook his head.

A straight answer. It could be a miracle from the Outsider. An answer that still made no sense, but Daud supposed he ought to count it as progress.

Another pause, and Corvo added, “The rats.” From someone else, it might have sounded like an attempt at an explanation. Corvo made it sound like a noun and a definite article.

“You can't summon rats anymore?” Had that ability been tied to Granny Rags? He'd never heard of one fully Marked apprenticing to another like that before, but then, much was undocumented about any Marked. But a possible madman being unable to summon plague rats could only be a good thing.

Corvo just blinked at him, though, so Daud left it on his list of concerns about which he could do little.

“If Lord Estermont were to drunkenly insult someone in your presence, would you challenge him to a duel?”

A slower blink. Daud might even dare call it quizzical. He briefly summarized Estermont's change of heart, the arrival of the Oracular Order, and Waverly's proposed solution. By the end of it, he thought Corvo might be looking faintly disapproving.

Or maybe Daud was just imagining things. When Corvo gave no reply, he gave up. “Want to spar?”

Corvo uncoiled like a striking snake. The sword came out; the mask went on. Daud barely had time to tether himself to the roof before Corvo summoned a windblast that would have knocked him off it, and then the fight was on, with all of Kaldwin's Bridge as their playground. They hopscotched along buildings, transversals leapfrogging one another, and it was glorious and wild, to know that here was his death—not some slow, wasting sickness to fog the brain: a fight, a duel, something he could meet head-on.

But death was playing with claws pulled in, this afternoon, and so by the end of it the blood was all superficial and any bones only cracked, not broken. They settled down at the highest point of the bridge, where their battle had culminated, far above any pesky potential witnesses. Daud was nursing a loose tooth, from when Corvo had cracked him in the jaw with the pommel of that magnificent sword; he thought Corvo might have pulled his shoulder, grabbing a cable to save himself from a very long drop. Corvo's transversals still needed work.

In the distance, a whale was screaming, as a ship carried it in to harbour and the slaughterhouses. Corvo walked toward the edge of the span as if mesmerized.

There was a scream from above them, high and loud within the range of natural human hearing, and a wave of disorientation, of blackness in the still-bright sun. The crow dropped out of the sky, screeching, wings beating frantically as it attempted too-tight circles about Corvo, who stumbled and nearly pitched off the edge of the span, but caught himself before Daud could manage to focus a tether on him, as enveloped as he was in the crow's fury.

_MINE,_ she screamed—_HE IS MINE HE IS MINE HE IS MINE!_

Daud staggered back, seeking the weak shelter of the supports. Squinting, he could make out Corvo, on his knees. His face was uplifted to the crow, and he bore an expression familiar to Daud, inevitably seen upon fresh corpses as they knelt before their driftwood shrines...

The crow dipped a wing and vanished westward, into the sun. Corvo's expression crumpled. A moment later, so did the rest of him, and he touched his forehead to the bridge's span in full genuflection.

Daud staggered, found his feet, and dared the open span once more, searching the horizon. By the time he got within ten feet of Corvo, the other man had moved to sit, legs dangling over the drop.

Cautiously, Daud dared join him, although he stayed out of arm's reach.

“That was exciting.”

Said to no reply, of course, but—had he thought Corvo to be expressionless? The mask he wore seemed perfectly clear to Daud, now: all-encompassing grief, the kind that numbed you through. Daud was familiar with it. At one point, he'd thought to let it have him forever, and he need never lay his soul bare again. He'd been young, then. It had been a long time before the Outsider had come to him. He'd not yet learned that there was always something more to lose.

Something more to gain—here he was, old and bloodstained, carrying the commission of a bright young Empress. Up this high, the wind would have swallowed any words spoken softly, but Daud could not bring himself to shout this accusation. A solution presented itself: extravagant, but perhaps fitting for such a conversation. Daud pulled at time, just the most minute amount as he would while preparing a transversal, and the wind froze into silence.

“It was the Empress' heart, wasn't it? That you put into the crow.”

Corvo bowed his head.

“Why?” Surely Daud had no right to be angry—he was her murderer—and yet, he was honestly unsure that he _had_ done worse to her. “Why a bird?”

Surprisingly, he got an answer. In the silence of the time between other moments, Corvo's voice was almost loud. “She wouldn't have wanted to... push out a person.”

“And you didn't think she'd object to plague rats?” Daud asked, incredulous. “To making weepers?”

Corvo looked at him helplessly.

Ah, yes. Madness.

“You didn't have to disturb her rest. You could have left her as she was.”

Corvo shook his head, staring at his hands.

“You could have left her heart in her chest, damn it.”

But Corvo wasn't listening anymore: he was staring out to sea, eyes empty, attention far away. Daud followed the direction of his gaze and saw the whaling ship, its mournful cargo hoisted high. Frozen in time, the whale could not, of course, be heard screaming. Of course not.

His distraction cost him; his grip on time wavered, and he let it go. The wind staggered him, ferocious in its return after even so brief a respite. Corvo flinched backwards as well, breaking his attention on the whale, and instead looked over the edge. After a moment he shoved himself off, and vanished as he fell. Daud couldn't see where he landed.

Daud frowned, peering down at the water despite himself. From their sparring, he hadn't thought Corvo could achieve that kind of range with a transversal. The span was wide. But there was no sign of him below.

A flock of magpies—ordinary, normal-sized birds—darted under the bridge and came up cawing, chasing one another in some odd avian game. Rats of the air. Daud eyed them, and felt an uneasy prickling in his gut that had nothing to do with being late for his next dose of elixir.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Estermont's Last Party: Part 1

The crow came to him at midnight. The sky had become overcast as the sun set, and with whale oil rationing in effect, the streetlights were unlit. The night was black as tar, merging seamlessly into her feathers where she perched upon his windowsill. Void-gaze illuminated her clearly, of course, but even without it he'd have known she was there. Her mere silent presence had disturbed him from slumber.

Not that he'd been sleeping well. He'd dreamt of calling for Thomas, Rulfio, Billie—but instead the ground dissolved and the rats poured up from the gnawing, hungry Void.

He woke with a scream lodged in his throat, and sat up slowly, trying not to look in her direction.

_He does not sleep well. Even in dreams, he is not permitted rest._ For a moment, Daud wondered if this was that same extraordinary mercy that had let Corvo spare him when Daud had stood, oblivious and damned, before him... but then she added, _Why should you be allowed it?_

The words could have been spiteful, but were only dull.

“I've been waiting for you,” said Daud.

_Time has taken on new meanings, and lost old ones. Have you found what he could not?_

Daud rose and stepped closer to his desk without looking. He'd laid out fresh materials after he'd finished practising, as he had done for the last two nights as well. Today had been the first time he'd not ended up with more feathers on the floor than on the corpse of the bird he'd brought down with his wristbow. Had she known that? Her claws clicked against the wood as she stepped out of the way of his blindly searching fingers, but he could still feel the air disturbed by her feathers, like a black miasma against his skin.

How had Corvo carried this around and remained as dubiously sane as he had? Dunwall should have been drowned in rats weeks ago. How was it not, when he had been mad enough to create the monstrosity of the crow's heart in the first place? Daud still had no idea how he'd managed that.

“I don't know what he tried,” he said, and took up the needle and knotted thread. “Not sure if he thought to look for this. May I?”

He did not want to touch her. He did not want to look at her. The crude gash down her chest should have been pouring out her lifeblood, a wound made by his own hand, and if he lived as long as Granny Rags he knew he'd never be able to sew it shut.

But he could gently tug thread through corvine skin, pulling tissue closed: a patch job done on a corpse, to hide the wounds of an empire. He would settle for illusion; the real thing was forever out of reach. Feathers shifted as he worked, pulled by a preening beak or his own clumsy hands. He pricked his fingers on the needle, constantly, only half on purpose—the binding demanded it, and when it asked for more he could not deny it. Each stitch formed part of a sailor's knot, and by the time he was done she was a glorious pattern of them, black thread beneath blood-speckled feathers.

She preened. Her beak nipped at his blood. Daud stumbled back, as hollow as if he'd transplanted the wound from her chest and carved it upon his own mind. But she no longer hurt to look upon: the crow was bound shut not with ill-placed twine, meant to secure and hold _open_ to further dark magics, but with a web of thread, blood, and knots which made the outer shell whole, and hid from view the far more terrible wound beneath.

“It's done,” he said, weak, breathless. And this from mere patch-work.

Her neck twisted this way and that as she examined his handywork. _It looks different. But I remain the same._

“It buys time. I don't know... if Emily...”

_I will not risk her._

“No,” he agreed.

She huddled in upon herself. _I was not myself, before I was this. I could barely understand the capacity for change. When I did, was it already too late? I thought it was Coldridge, or fear for young Emily. When Emily was safe, I thought it was grief for... the Empress. Then poison, then a witch's curse. But none of these things could steal my beloved's soul. No. It was me, always._

Her grief was a palpable thing, weighting the air and dragging down Daud's exhausted mind. It lingered long after she was gone, a shadow into the night, until finally he looked down and realized that his fingers had gone numb from the chill air creeping through the still-open window.

“Fuck,” he muttered, whole-heartedly.

He did not return to bed. He knew he wouldn't sleep.

  
  


  
  


The security arrangements for any of the Empress' activities outside the Tower were always a headache; her attendance at a party was always going to be a logistical nightmare, and that was before her Lord Protector had been ordered away and Daud had contracted the thrice-damned plague. That the festivities were occurring at the Lady Chancellor's estate did not mitigate any of the necessary paranoia. It was as well the crow had returned when she had, for Daud spent every waking moment from then on planning security with Geoff, pausing only to hear updates on the wider situation that might affect the event. There were more of those than he would have liked. This party was going to be very public: _everything_ had the potential to impact security.

His luck held, or maybe all the elixir he was drinking was more useful than Sokolov thought: he did not start coughing, blood or otherwise. An alternate reason for his good fortune occurred to him, but he could not bring himself to contemplate it long enough to ask Corvo.

Corvo, in any event, had vanished when Daud returned to the Tower, done for now with Sokolov's library. He was _around_, however: he left a number of scribbled notes with criticisms of Daud and Geoff's security plans. The advice was usually good—Corvo had over a decade of experience with things like this—but it was also sometimes cryptic, and occasionally fucking loony. Daud had to get Waverly to approve the list of foods Emily was banned from eating—apparently offering whole fruits to an Empress was akin to a death threat, after the assassination of one via figs and another by an apple in the early seventeenth century—but even she couldn't explain what “problem with needles” was supposed to mean in conjunction with the fish course.

Waverly, Geoff, Callista, and Captain Ramskin all appealed to the Empress, with varying levels of concern, to recall Corvo from his 'medical holiday'. Daud didn't bother, and indeed, the Empress dismissed each of their pleas with growing displeasure.

He hadn't had time yet to do a detailed examination of the Empress' tomb. Corvo's confession seemed to render it redundant. And yet... it nagged at him. A cursory look revealed no sign of tampering, as was to expected for the well-guarded tomb of a much-loved monarch. How _had _Corvo stolen the Empress' heart? _When_ had he stolen it? Dunwall did not embalm her dead; the heart should have been far more rotted than the terrible thing he'd glimpsed...

It made his head ache to dwell on.

The Abbey remained impenetrable. Corvo remained elusive. The Empress remained both child and promised golden monarch. Daud's days remained numbered. Considered from such a perspective, nothing had changed from the day Billie had offered him her sword and her life for a second time.

Daud slept in Corvo's room, with its secret passages designed to carry sound from the Empress' chambers, that her Lord Protector could always know if she required aid. Corvo, Daud hoped, slept _somewhere_, but Daud couldn't find any evidence of it.

He'd before never found himself looking forward to a party so much—if only so the planning would be done with. A mere few days had stretched out into an eternity. But at last there was no more time to re-jig anything: the event arrived. And he hadn't started to cough, so he couldn't even plead plague to get out of it.

Daud was at the Boyle estate well ahead of time. He might be sleeping in the Lord Protector's suite, and doing most of the damn job, but the public aspects of the role all fell to Geoff, thankfully, and as Daud did not have to be seen safeguarding the Empress' arrival, his time was better spent where he could actually accomplish that task. Though he did ensure he had a full field of view for when her carriage pulled up to the estate. It was a pleasant break from listening to the prattling nobles inside—most already halfway to drunk, or more.

A shadow appeared beside him on the roof as he watched Geoff hand Emily down. “Sir,” murmured Thomas. “Estermont's carriage is en route. He's bringing two of the Sisters with him, and they've a second carriage behind them filled with Overseers. At least two devices. ETA ten minutes.”

At last.

“Pass the word. And if you see the Lord Protector, let him know,” said Daud, and Thomas vanished.

He had no idea if Corvo had planned to do anything to Estermont; he'd had to draw up plans to account for Corvo challenging Estermont to a duel, but he'd also drawn up plans for the estate suddenly being invaded by a swarm of rats—much to Geoff's confusion—and the Outsider only knew which way Corvo would jump. If even He did. Corvo might do nothing except watch over his Empress as she enjoyed her Chancellor's hospitality. Corvo might not even show up. That was fine. Geoff was sceptical but willing to play along, given sufficient assurances that Daud would see that he won any duel he cared to offer. A very practical man, was Geoff Curnow.

Plans had also been made to deal with an Abbey presence. Daud made his way down from the roof and over to Waverly, waiting impatiently for her to complete her hostess' dutiful, enthusiastic greeting to her monarch, as formal as if she did not see Emily nearly every day. Emily replied, careful and formal in kind for the benefit of a pack of soused nobles. By the time he could get close enough to drop a word in Waverly's ear—his garb for the evening was similar to the guards, but his face was masked and the last thing he wanted to do was alarm some over-zealous idiot—there was barely time enough for him to vanish back into the shadows before Estermont's first carriage pulled up.

'Poor form to arrive in a carriage too small to seat all members of his party' appeared to be the main reaction among those party guests also observing, at least until the first crank handle began to turn. Then it was all salacious gossip. This party would be a battleground between Waverly and Estermont, proxies for the Crown and the Abbey, and everyone knew it.

The initial sortie ended in Estermont's favour; the Overseers were told to put their toys away, and sullenly agreed, but the introduction of two of their—blindfolded, mysterious, foreign, beautiful—Sisters made a stir. Estermont, smiling smugly, escorted one of the Sisters toward the drinks table—or was she escorting him?—while the other entertained those curious about the notoriously cloistered Order, handling the provocative questions with a coy glibness that surely no seclusion could have fostered.

The Order had always claimed to look at futures and present alike. It might even be true. In the end, whether their knowledge came from mysticism or more pragmatic sources made little difference compared to how they put it into practice, and this Sister was handling that very ably indeed. She pulled a crowd around her in a way that might have been described as 'holding court', were that not a dangerous comparison to make with the child Empress settling in to do exactly that in the Boyles' grand hall.

The Lady Chancellor's decorum was not up to dislodging her unexpected guest—but Waverly had more weapons in her arsenal. Lydia appeared from the crowd, weaving as if well on the way to drunk, and latched onto the Sister like a limpet, firmly ignoring the zone of personal space about the woman that even Daud hadn't realized was present until it was gone. Interesting. He followed along via servants' corridors as the second Boyle lady pulled the Sister to the audience with the Empress so inexorably that the Sister had little choice but to give in graciously. Point to Waverly, Daud thought, when he saw that Estermont had been left standing by the punch bowl.

The grand hall had two overlooking balconies. Daud made his way to one, clocking the off-hand signals of the Whalers on duty—nothing new to report, nothing he did not already know—and confirming that the locations of the other, more obvious guards remained as expected. Nothing had gone sideways yet. This was still Waverly's battlefield.

And young Emily's. She received the Sister's obeisance—not a particularly deep one—with an emotionless mask that would have done her Lord Protector proud, and permitted the woman to come closer and kiss her gloved hand: honour and reminder, both.

Down below, the guards were wary but relaxed; Daud's own, similar. Staying on edge all night was a surefire way to exhaust oneself, and these men and women knew it was better to remain loose enough to react. All of them were oblivious to the shadow attached to the wall high above the Empress, directly over the throne.

The Sister kissed the imperial hand and stepped back, posture demure but expression bright. The shadow above her did not move, but Daud could still feel the slight easing in the air as the Sister unwittingly stepped back from death.

Daud relaxed more slowly. At least he he knew where Corvo was, for now.

Below, Emily and the Sister fenced—and, oh, that was clever of Waverly, to remove herself as proxy and let Emily deal directly. The Sister could not show claws to a young girl without seeming considerably less charming than she'd been presenting herself as thus far, and inviting the Empress' protectors and all witnesses to ire and retaliation. And Emily was well-prepared, not an easy target to make seem unwise and in need of guidance. She enquired about the hardship of the journey from Serkonos, about how the Sisters were enjoying Gristol's hospitality, and blithely remarked on how pleased she was to see the Abbey could rely on their far-sighted Sisters to guide them through their recent troubles.

“Or Orders remain separate, Your Majesty,” demurred the Sister. “Two distinct bulwarks to ward against the Outside. But we are pleased to offer aid to all allies in the fight against evil. The Abbey shall soon be set right, and able to provide guidance to you once more.”

“That is long overdue,” said Emily. “I can't believe a man as vile as Campbell ever provided my mother with useful guidance. No advice at all would be less treacherous than any from such a snake.”

Evidently, the Sister's sight had not forewarned her to expect such bluntness from her child-Empress. She made nearly the same mistake as the pious Abbey-men. “Hold to hope and patience, Majesty. Deliverance will be provided soon.”

“Hoping and waiting is a luxury of the religious orders. Not one which I can have as Empress. My empire must keep moving, or trade stops, and everyone starves. I'm not going to let that happen. The Empire will go on. I have every confidence”—and Daud recognized the next phrase, carefully practised until it seemed spontaneous—“that the Abbey and the Order have within them pious men and women who shall accompany us upon that path.”

A dismissal; Waverly stepped forward, playing the host ready to introduce the next guest to her monarch—though the callow young man she was leading seemed more fascinated by the show. The Sister could either pick a fight or give way graciously, and she had already chosen graciousness. Not a bad choice, really; the Abbey had hardly covered itself in victories by choosing obstinance.

Besides, she still had those Brothers with music-boxes, if she wanted to launch an offensive later. She stepped back to the care of the Overseer escorting her—blindfolded or not, she didn't seem to much need the guiding arm he offered. Was it just the angle Daud was watching from, or did she tilt her face upward to set her sightless gaze upon the shadowed wall above the throne?

One of the Whalers on watch, Javier, finally noticed the Lord Protector as well, setting off a flurry of covered hand-signals. Daud rolled his eyes and otherwise ignored them. Corvo did likewise, without the eye-rolling, or so Daud presumed; he'd let the Void-gaze drop, and without it Corvo's face was as hidden as if he'd been wearing his mask.

The Empress was well protected, and the soppy youth now stammering to her would have been no match for her wit even if _she'd_ been the one half-drunk. Daud went to check on the progression of the rest of the party. There were Overseers to consider, away from their Abbey walls and boxes and vulnerable. One with a box had gone to stand in the grand hall, while the other remained near the doors closer to the carriage-house. Both stood as if on duty. An Overseer escorted the Sister who'd paid Emily greetings, and continued to stand as a bulky, gold-masked ornament while she returned to charming the party-goers: a more difficult proposition, now, since even drunk nobles could keep score. The last three Overseers, unattached, drifted through the party with the postures of men who very much wanted to have their hands on their swords. It was not merely the excess of food and drink, nor the vulgarity of language (and, in one side-room far from the Empress' eyes, behaviour) around them, Daud thought. No: these were men who expected something to happen.

Hm. Make the Lord Protector jumpy enough, and something likely would...

Subtlety precluded the use of summoning, here, when most of his Whalers might be within sight of a guard, if not guests, at any time. But after all their preparations Daud knew where each of them would be, and who would already be paying particular attention to their pious guests. Instructions were passed in short order, and messengers dispatched into the city. If they could learn anything, they would. If they learned enough, one of these Overseers might leave the party a different man entirely. And if whatever the Overseers were waiting for happened, there were knives ready to plunge into their kidneys.

The nobles mingled and grew drunker. Emily rose from her chair and mingled as well for a time, which was to say, she held court less formally and while standing. It was a test of her ability to control a more casual crowd, one that towered above her, and it had Waverly hovering almost anxiously, if Waverly had been inclined to any such behaviour.

Daud slipped next to her when she paused beside a screen. “The Sister is keeping Estermont on a leash.” How a blindfolded woman could be so adept at determining when Estermont was about to open his mouth and redirecting his attention, Daud had no idea. It seemed a skill more likely to be found in a brothel than a cloister—but for all he knew, the Order practised the same arts. She did not seem so adept at keeping him from drinking himself into insensibility, however.

“Then tug on it,” Waverly murmured back. Her mouth twisted sourly. “She's letting the Fontaine chit monopolize her time.”

Daud was nonplussed, then realized she meant Emily. The Fontaine girl—youngest of her siblings, sixteen years old and spoiled rotten—had indeed been speaking with Emily for some minutes now. She'd also gotten Emily to laugh twice, quite spontaneously, a joyful sound that cut through the frantic revelry and relaxed the air of the whole party, except, of course, for the shadow perched on the chandelier directly above Miss Fontaine's head.

“Wait for Her Majesty to leave, and you'll have a clear floor. They won't seek another audience,” Waverly continued, eyes not leaving the Empress. “Not tonight. Tomorrow concerns me.”

“But if I just start killing people now, it would ruin your carpets?”

Any rejoinder was cut short by a swell of noise from the nearest fireplace. Heads turned, as rapidly as those of carrion crows. Estermont's voice rose above it—slow and thick with drink. “Still your own tongue, woman!” He'd shaken off the grip of the Sister escorting him.

“Slipping his leash,” said Waverly, eyes bright.

“My Lord—”

“I'm not some bastard child needing a nursemaid to feed me lines,” Estermont snarled. Slurred. “I'll say what I think and I'd have said it to her mother, too!”

Drink had made his volume increase and the growing quiet made him seem even louder. The nobles all appeared frozen with anticipation, as did Emily and Geoff. Daud caught the eyes of the guards, flicking signals and searching for a danger that must surely be about to materialize, but there were no armed strangers, no gunshots, no damned music-boxes.

Estermont seemed to realize at last that every eye in the room was upon him. He wavered, put a hand on the table to steady himself, and stood defiantly. “Well, Burrows wouldn't have let it come to this. Blood will out! It's no wonder she wants us to pay to wipe the nose of every snivelling street rat—no wonder, the product of street-trash, herself!

“Did you slip something in his drink?” Waverly asked incredulously, barely loud enough to carry over the space between them.

Daud had no attention to spare for her: the shadow above the chandelier was gone. Nor was Corvo perched on a dark slice of wall. Daud shut his eyes, pulled at the Void, and peered through the screens, the walls. Corvo was not there.

But in the twilight of the Void's sight, he could see what was around Estermont: a roiling, odious vapour, not so much clinging to the man's skin as emanating from it. Inhabiting it.

“Don't pretend you're shocked,” Estermont said. Was directed to say. Spittle foamed at the corners of his mouth. He—it—sounded very drunk. “You've all thought it...”

Body moving, but that was not his mind...

Daud recognized this. It was not Delilah's lacework imitation, delicate spellwork woven into an iron-corded noose. This was blunt force, will seizing will. Daud knew this, intimately. When he was young and high on his newly-gained power, he'd come across a shrine decorated with more runes than he'd ever seen in his life. Even now it would have been a fortune. Idiot that he was, he'd thought the shrine's caretaker a feeble old man. He hadn't considered what strength it must take to assemble such a plethora of artifacts and not die from a brain-bleed. He'd never met another Marked, before.

The old man had worn him for a month, and when Daud had at last come near to breaking free, made him climb aboard a whaling trawler, chain his foot to an anchor, and hit the winch. Daud had broken his ankle getting free, and never would have escaped the lightless depths if he'd not had the ability to transverse.

When he'd been able to walk again—when he'd been able to think of it without his hands shaking too badly to hold a knife—he'd forced himself to hunt the old man down, determined to put a bolt through his skill from a hundred paces. He'd never managed to find him.

Now, he called up a transversal on instinct, thinking only _away _and _hide._ The world paused—except Estermont. The cloud roiled about him, and Daud froze, too, prey instinct lurching out of his hindbrain and taking over.

The cloud pulled away from Estermont, leaving his body frozen as well—and then it was solidifying into a dark-eyed man in a dark coat. Corvo nodded at him, as if Daud were doing him a favour, and looked around. There was a screen right beside him, so that he wouldn't be seen by the crowd if he just stayed where he was, but he transversed nearer to the hallway instead.

“If you were planning this all along,” Daud said, irritation thick to cover the Void-damned fear, “you could have fucking said.”

Corvo blinked at him, frowned, and stepped out of sight.

Daud let the transversal go. Time resumed, and noise and colour; he opened his eyes to see Estermont stagger, looking very green, and then vomit all over the floor. The nearest guests jumped back in disgust. Two of the Overseers that had come with Estermont broke through the crowd and pulled him up, perhaps to escort him away.

Geoff looked to Daud. Daud shook his head minutely.

“What...” Estermont mumbled. “I was... oh, I don't think that wine...”

A dark figure stepped forward, the gaily-dressed party-goers falling back from him like hagfish from a leviathan. Corvo's glove—his right—landed squarely at Estermont's feet, barely touching the puddle of vomit. Estermont gaped.

“Send your second,” said Corvo. His rasping voice was so quiet that he wouldn't have been audible if the room had not been dead silent, breathless with anticipation. The Lord Protector's expressionless mask was broken; he was pale, face set, his whole body trembling with rage. “You give satisfaction within the hour, or I come hunting.”

“I—but, I—” stammered Estermont.

The Empress' voice broke through any returning conversation, clear as a bell. “Corvo!” There was no denying the dismay, there—but she looked about and schooled her features. “Lord Protector, a word with you before your duel.” She swept up both Waverly and Daud in the same glance, and gestured imperiously to Geoff—he turned and strode ahead of her, to the staircase in the great hall. Corvo caught up quickly, bending his head toward Waverly as she said something Daud didn't catch; he was moving in a different direction, to take a more discreet way up.

“I didn't really say...” he heard Estermont protest, and then the sounds of more vomiting.

“...thought he was supposed to have caught the plague...”

“...actually said that...”

“...poor form when Estermont can barely stand...”

“...why one should never drink to excess, my dear.”

Tittering laughter followed Daud up the back stairs.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Estermont's Last Party: Part 2

Daud shut his eyes and let the Void darken his sight once more, tracking the imperial party as he moved to intercept them. He could not make himself look away from Corvo for more than a moment—each time he did he felt a pressure on his mind, the memory of that month returned to haunt him, until he convulsively glanced back and saw that Corvo was still there, still corporeal.

Waverly ushered them to a private room, where Geoff directed guards to stand outside the main door. Daud entered through a side-door, instead, and waved down one of his own to cover it, sweeping the rest of the room one more time out of paranoia before he forced himself to open his eyes. Corvo was right there—Daud would see if he disappeared.

The Empress whirled on them. “You set that up,” she accused. Oh, but no one could say little Emily wasn't clever. “Somehow.”

Waverly demurred; Geoff raised an eyebrow at Daud; Daud said flatly, “Not me.” Let Corvo decide what truths he owed his Empress, and what protection.

The Lord Protector inclined his head, a nod that was also obeisance. He was still tense, shaking... but that couldn't be rage, not in that direction...

Emily's lower lip wobbled, her face set into furious anger. “I said I didn't want to see you!”

Corvo flinched back, eyes widening in surprise and then—guilt, devastation—her words laid him open more thoroughly than a sword across the face, or through the belly. Emily saw it and flinched likewise, but either the sternness of an Empress or the cruelty of an oft-betrayed child straightened her spine, and she glared all the harder.

Corvo went down to one knee, shaking more now than he had when he'd thrown his glove at Estermont. His head bowed, as if he could not bare to look upon her.

“I suppose you'll have to kill him,” said Emily. “For what he said.”

Corvo remained silent.

Waverly and Geoff remained so as well. Both, Daud saw, were recalculating, trying to figure out what Corvo's supposed medical leave had really been covering; both were sneaking Daud glances, wondering at his involvement. Neither was going to break the agonizing silence, and Corvo would break himself with it, first. It fell upon Daud to clear his throat and suggest, “It would be entirely believable for him to flee the city, never to be seen again.”

“And do you have a convenient place to keep him?” Waverly asked, the ghost of the last noble disappeared from the Boyle residence hanging over her every word.

Daud shrugged. A place could be found. “He may even be about to try it himself, considering his predicament.” Though Daud doubted he was enough in his wits to pull it off. The blockade would catch him. No, if he managed any such thing, it would be from the Sisters interfering somehow.

Waverly's lips thinned. “I don't recommend it. Those remarks were vile enough to require public remonstrance.”

Below, the grinding wail of a music-box started up, piercing through the walls. Daud turned, but it was near enough to proscribe Void-gaze even if it was too far away to invoke agony. He would simply have to hope that none of his Whalers were caught out enough to reveal themselves. Corvo was on his feet in a moment and between his Empress and the door with sword in hand, even if the blade wasn't yet extended. The box was coming nearer.

Daud stepped quickly out the side-door, directed his Whaler to keep watch down the hallway, and bent to peek through the keyhole.

He could not see Corvo. He could not... but of course, the damn boxes would keep Corvo from doing anything, either—or at least, anything that could not be accomplished with flesh and steel and enough grenades to supply an armoury.

The main door opened. Two Overseers stepped through, one with the box, and Daud winced as his head throbbed. Then Emily's furious voice rang out over the noise. “Cease that racket at once, or I will have your stupid boxes all broken! How dare you barge in on us!”

The box whimpered to a halt. Daud forced himself to take normal breaths instead of gasps as the headache receded. No damage requiring an elixir, he estimated—but he could hear now the strains from a second box which hadn't been silenced, elsewhere in the manor. Too far to cause a headache, but near enough to be a problem.

Inside, one of the Overseers proclaimed, “Your Majesty, these devices are for the protection of you and all your realm.”

“I don't see how they've ever protected anything, and they give me a headache. I won't put up with it.”

“The Outsider walks this night, Your Majesty,” said the Overseer, and, ah, damn, it was with the zeal of a true believer. “The Oracles have seen it: the true faces of the Outsider's puppets shall be revealed and the righteous will proclaim victory! We must ensure no foul witchcraft is used to avoid this fate. The Empire itself hangs upon this duel. Do not permit the heretics to use their dark arts to determine its outcome, Your Majesty!”

The man's voice was loud enough to be heard echoing through the adjoining halls. Damn, Daud thought—the fucking door was still open. The Overseer might even have been heard downstairs. True believer or not, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“It is a duel over a drunkard insulting my mother and me,” Emily said sceptically. “You presume much.”

“Empress, I beg of you.” The Overseer went to his knees. “Allow the holy chord to safeguard this duel. It will not permit a witch to interfere and no honest man need fear its effects. It shall ensure that the course of this duel is determined by honour alone.” He stood, and bowed—not to the Empress; to someone behind her. Corvo? Daud couldn't see. “We know you will be victorious, Lord Protector. Let us guard you that none may steal your victory or gainsay it later. Our only desire is to defend the Empire in this critical hour.”

They should have sent this one to speak to the Empress, Daud thought, instead of the Sister. But then he wouldn't have been able to blindside them all now.

“You may observe the duel,” said the Empress, slowly, clearly reluctant. “And stand ready.”

“Majesty, the works of the Outsider are subtle, and the holy chord can only interrupt them when it is played aloud.”

“It is noisy and odd—it will disrupt their concentration in the duel!”

“It is quieter than gunshots, Majesty. It will not not distract an experienced duellist, not one has not turned to the Outsider. It will ensure the Empire's honest victory.”

The Empress was cornered—why in the Void wasn't Waverly stepping in? Perhaps Waverly couldn't, not with the rumours that circled about Lydia. “Oh, very well,” Emily snapped. “But you're not to play them until then. I won't allow it.”

The Overseer prostrated himself, and retreated with his victory. Daud stepped down the corridor, cat-footed, until he could see the main door—and see, to his dismay, that the Overseer with the box remained behind on duty, and likely able to hear sounds from within. Daud turned back and returned to the room.

Corvo was leaning heavily against a wall, breathing ragged; Emily's ire seemed to have evaporated into concern for him. Daud reached her, saying roughly, “Keep your voice down. They're outside the door,” before she could speak any louder and perhaps betray all of them with her clear, piping voice.

She pressed her hand against Corvo's, who fumbled to take hers in his own, unusually clumsy. Daud rolled his eyes and reached into Corvo's coat, retrieving a matched pair of red and blue vials—what was the point of carrying so much damned stuff around if he didn't use it? “Drink,” he ordered. Corvo had been caught in the same room as one of those boxes, however briefly. And his earlier shaking—in retrospect, shock fading, it obviously hadn't been anger at all, but mana-exhaustion. Corvo was no ancient and powerful witch, to shrug off the cost of such a trick. Not yet.

Waverly and Geoff joined them, huddling in close; it fell to Daud to check the doors were closed properly, this time. “I take it,” Geoff was saying acerbically as Daud returned, “that the holy chord _is_ going to be a problem.”

How in the Void had Geoff not already known? It must have been wilful blindness.

Corvo didn't reply. He'd drained the vials, but he was still pale—was drawing into himself, closing off. Not from lingering damage, and certainly not from whatever Geoff might throw at him, Daud thought—no, it was that Emily had dropped his hand and stepped back, expression mulish.

“You must call the duel off, then.”

“He absolutely must not,” said Waverly. She turned to Daud. “Your plan to make him disappear—”

On cue, a knock from the side door, and Thomas stepped in, pushing the door gently shut behind him. Daud beckoned him over to their huddle with a tilt of his head. “Can we disappear Estermont?”

“He's being watched. Your Majesty, sir.”

“How closely?”

“Closely. And he has a dozen gawkers—one or two actual friends, trying to sober him up. He's not going to 'slip away' unremarked.”

“The power of suggestion?” said Waverly.

Thomas shook his head. “The Overseers seem determined to see this through. He won't make it on his own.” He coughed, wetly, into his sleeve; he'd been near a box, too.

“You shouldn't have set him up in the first place,” said Emily. “You should have stayed away until—until I said so.” Her voice was tremulous, her eyes wet. The perils of having a child Empress, but oh, this was all they needed right now, and they had the wrong Curnow in the room to deal with a child about to have a crying fit—

Thomas stepped over to the main door and opened the sideboard there, fetching down a drinks tray: a silver antique platter with a decanter of what must be brandy and several crystal tumblers. He uncorked the brandy and poured a very small amount into one tumbler, which he returned to press into Emily's hand. “Here, Majesty. Have a sip.”

He said it with such firm authority that Emily obeyed on seeming reflex—gagging and coughing a moment later. “Ugh! That's vile!” Her eyes were watering. “Why do grown-ups drink that!”

“For much the same reason,” muttered Geoff; foul or not, it had thoroughly distracted the Empress.

Another knock, this time from the main door, and from someone polite enough to wait. Daud ducked behind a screen while Emily coughed, sniffed in a most un-ladylike fashion, and called, “Come in.”

It was a very concerned Ethan Carroway, one of Estermont's supporters—and the thrice damned Overseer behind him. Carroway cleared his throat nervously, lingering beside the door and looking like he wished he could reach for the open brandy, himself—possibly forgoing a tumbler and simply taking the bottle. “Your Majesty.” He bowed low. “Lady Chancellor, Lord Protector. I am here in the capacity of Talmedge's second.”

Corvo detached himself from the wall, floating closer. Carroway offered him a nod that was closer to another nervous bow. “Ah, I must request—can there not be reconciliation? A man full of drink may say outrageous things, not meaning, er...”

“To be called to account for them?” Waverly asked, _sotto voce_.

Carroway shot her a glare and pulled himself together. “My lord. On my friend's behalf, I beg your pardon and indulgence. He did not know what he said, truly. He is drunk. We do not know if we can sober him up much in time.”

Corvo shrugged, indifferent.

“He is in no condition to duel, my lord. He is near raving.”

Silence from Corvo—Daud couldn't see if he was even bothering to make an expression. Waverly stepped into the gap, asking with sweet concern, “Should he be committed to an asylum?” Not that any remained that hadn't turned to housing weepers instead, under Emily's orders.

“My lady, that is not—he is not a madman.”

“He answers,” rasped Corvo.

Carroway grimaced and accepted his defeat. “I see, my lord, that I cannot convince you to reconcile. So be it; let his blood be on your conscience. I must arrange matters with your second.”

Corvo tilted his head to Geoff, who was caught off-guard and stepped forward only belatedly, and with reluctance. Daud took the opportunity to signal Thomas over, and passed him a small bag and quick instructions; Thomas made himself scarce. The Empress, bereft of her protectors, looked very alone in the middle of the room and very much like a young girl. Waverly looked like she might intervene, but there was another knock and a servant entered with a curtsey, crossing to Waverly and murmuring, “My lady, your sister requests your presence downstairs.”

Of course. Waverly grimaced, doubtlessly envisioning the hagfish below, and waved off the maid, taking a few quick steps to the back of the room where Daud hid. “You will...?”

“Yes,” said Daud.

Her voice was low, but her words were careful regardless. “Whatever is arranged—it can't be treachery, not from the Crown.” Of course not, not with the zealots babbling about prophecy. That would be all over the party by now, and ready to spread like wildfire through the commons.

“I know what I'm doing,” Daud muttered irritably.

“I suppose that's what you're paid for,” she sniped, and went to Emily. “Your Majesty—I believe we should see to your subjects.”

“I should stay here,” Emily fretted, but Waverly shook her head.

“Strength must be seen,” Waverly insisted. “And so too much righteousness—particularly with the Abbey running about being ridiculous.” She sniffed. “Prophecies, indeed. It falls upon the monarch to bring sanity and stability to such occasions.”

“I don't have anyone to act as Protector.”

“Easily remedied.”

For once, it was. Esma had relied upon the Lord Regent to supply her with guards, but Waverly contracted her own. A mere lieutenant in the city watch would have been insufficient for the dignity of an Empress, but the champion of the Lady Chancellor's guard, a woman who stood taller than any man in the room except Corvo and carried herself with the assurance of someone who knew how to take people apart, was perfect for the role. Nor was it too political a statement, here—not in Waverly's own house, with the menfolk publicly occupied providing the evening's entertainment.

Carroway left at last, Geoff in tow. The Overseer did not. Corvo did not seem inclined to order him out again, forcing Daud to wait until the Overseer turned his head before he could stroll to the side-door, face casually averted. He held quick, very quiet meetings with his people in the side corridor, keeping one ear on the room: if he came back to find the Overseer eaten by rats, that would be awkward.

Geoff came back up the stairs at last, along with two of Waverly's guards, carrying a pistol-case. Thomas stepped up after them, lingering in the open. He turned and caught Daud's eye, giving a nod and a flash of two fingers before moving inside.

Daud shifted back down the corridor, nearer to the door, and listened.

“He chose pistols, of course,” Geoff was saying. “So there's proof of sanity if you wanted it.” On Carroway's part, at least—no sane man would pick the sword, not against the Lord Protector—but perhaps he didn't know about Montgomery Shaw's hand. Or perhaps he thought a repeat outcome was his best hope. “Our host is providing the weapons—under the terms, each party may inspect them beforehand, and again immediately prior to the commencement. Estermont's already had a go.”

The click of metal on metal: a case opening, then pistols taken out, broken apart and reassembled. Geoff's voice, lower and closer to the side door: “Outsider's eyes, you look like a ghost. Is it—” He cut himself off.

Footsteps receded away. Faintly, barely audible over the sounds of the party drifting up from below, was the sound of liquid being poured. Footsteps returning.

“Cheers, Corvo,” said Geoff. “Have a drink and get your head on straight. Be fucking embarrassing to lose to a man as soused as Estermont because you're too damned sober.”

That was unexpectedly convenient. Perhaps Thomas had had a word with him.

Silence. Then, coughing. Two men—Daud had heard Corvo cough more than he'd heard him talk, and recognized his rasp. Geoff sounded little better as he gasped, “So that's King Street Brandy. My word, that's as vile as rumoured. Fucking Tyvians. You boys want any?”

Waverly's guards demurred, pleading duty. That was a level of discipline that made Daud blink in surprise, although one of the guards did add, “If I'm going to drink swill, I'd prefer the kind that won't send me blind, sir. Had a sip of King Street, once—it's worse than the stuff my ma used to brew in her bathtub.”

“No doubt,” Geoff said, still sounding a bit wheezy. “Well, now you have to win, Corvo—can't let that be your last drink. Come on, it's nearly time.”

Glasses clinked against hardwood as they were set down. Footsteps led away. Daud stepped into the room in time to see the guards follow the Overseer out, Curnow and Geoff ahead of them, Thomas playing along as well. Daud followed, much less concerned about a guard recognizing him than an Overseer, but inclined to hide from both regardless. They took a back stair down to the main floor, near the doors out to the back gardens, where a crowd of vultures had already clustered. Carroway was waiting for them, grim, flushed.

“My lord,” he said, unsteadily. “Please... consider, at least, a delay. There is no honour in killing a man too incapacitated to... to...”

He wavered, put his hands up—and fell, groaning, to the floor. The audience gasped.

“Witchcraft!” cried the Overseer, reaching for the crank of his box.

But Geoff yanked his hand away, spitting, “Don't be a fool—he's been poisoned! Fetch a doctor, someone—fetch one of your all-seeing Sisters, see if they know who.” Bending down to roll Carroway onto his side, he staggered, overbalanced, and fell to his knees. “Fuck... damnit, who...” He tried to get back up, and collapsed.

“Lord Protector—!”

Corvo was leaning heavily against the wall, pale and sweating, eyes unfocused. He reached out clumsily, snagging one of Waverly's guards; it did not seem like he had enough strength to pull the man forward, but the guard went willingly, propping him up. “Lord Attano—”

“Overseers,” Corvo forced out. “Arrest them... did this...”

Well, Daud couldn't say he was slow on the uptake.

“The brandy!” exclaimed the other guard, and drew his sword. “That bastard was standing over it!”

“Lies!” cried the Overseer. “Reveal yourself, heretic!” He began to turn the crank.

The crowd flinched. Corvo hit the floor, pulling the guard down with him. And Thomas, dressed in Tower Guard blues and lacking any of the hesitation a normal guard might have about raising arms against an Overseer, slammed the hilt of his sword into the back of the Overseer's head.

“Raise the alarm,” Thomas snapped at Waverly's guard, over the clatter of the body hitting the ground. “Now!”

“The Empress,” rasped Corvo, and then his eyes rolled up in his head and he went limp.

Things started happening very quickly. Thomas had already committed, and stuck his fingers in his mouth to issue a piercing whistle, low-high-low. Elsewhere, the second music-box cut off. The Void's vitality flooded back into Daud, and through him, every other Whaler. But that was not a signal to break all cover: merely to go hunting.

An alarm rang. Guests screamed and cowered. Booted feet thudded across carpeted hallways, and Daud faded further back up the stairwell and transversed across until he had eyes on the Empress—a point of calm in the storm as guards formed a wall around her, then whisked her into a side-chamber off the main hall, a more defensible position. Waverly remained in the hall, surrounded by her own guards and dispatching quick instructions.

Somebody shouted, “Estermont's dead!”

“Traitors!” Daud recognized Roberts' formidable bellow. “The damned Abbey are the traitors, they poisoned them all!”

“Doctor Galvani, Doctor Hypatia—I do not care, get whoever is nearest!”

There was blood on the marble floor, and bodies: one of the Sisters and her escort. They looked to still be breathing, just insensate. Daud scanned for any others nearby—none. Through the walls, he could see the guards corralling the nobles.

Misha appeared next to him. “We have three Overseers and one box secured in the East Wing.”

Then that left only the Sister tasked with chaperoning Estermont. She should have been in the East Wing as well. “Take your team, go to Estermont's estate, secure it. Use sleep darts and as much baffle-dust as required.” Which would also let them use their powers, as required, without uncanny reflection upon the Crown. “Bring in the Tower Guard for backup when you're done, but secure it fast, now.”

He vanished, and so did Daud—over to the balcony doors, then up, onto a rooftop. The last Sister was here somewhere, and could not have gotten far...

A deeper blackness hurtled down out of the night, striking his shoulder and nearly knocking him over. Daud swore, barely kept his balance, and stopped himself from slamming a knife into the creature. The crow's talons dug through the armoured weave of his coat as though it was cotton, her wings beating as she gained her balance.

_I can smell your desire for the hunt, and your quarry. And your guilt! Who have you slain now, assassin?_

“No one,” Daud growled, then—as her talons dug deeper, “Estermont, maybe, by proxy. An accident.”

_As you have slain so many of my people._

That, he could not deny.

_The Sister flees. Eastward. If you do not find her by dawn, she will discard her bandages and watch the sunrise for the first time since her parents sold her as a child._

He knew how it was to dream of a different life. The unexpected fellow-feeling made his skin prickle with discomfort. It should have been the opposite—it should have been easier, given a target like himself... so unlike the Empress. He took a breath and reminded them both of his priorities. “I need her discredited.”

The crow shoved against him, talons slicing as she threw herself upward. Her cry split the night, and a man would have to be deaf and witless besides to mistake it for the mindless fury of a mere animal.

“You want her life spared? A Sister of the Order? _Why_?” Daud demanded of the sky. He couldn't see her amidst the black.

There was no answer forthcoming. He'd already received it weeks ago, the words of the mother on the daughter's lips: _They are all my people, and I will save them if I can..._

Daud swore again, tiredly, and fished out an elixir to repair the rents in his flesh, if not in his clothing.

Then he turned to go back inside—and paused. Below, a carriage was pulling up, and the lights of the manor illuminated the crest upon its side: Kaldwin's Bridge. But Sokolov could not have arrived so quickly; there had not been enough time. Had Thomas sent for him early?

Guards swarmed the carriage, and yes, that was Sokolov jumping out, and Joplin behind him. Daud transversed down into a shadow nearby. Both of them were dishevelled, soot-faced—Joplin was missing half an eyebrow.

“—must see the Empress at once,” Sokolov was demanding.

The guard, equally excited, spoke right over him. “—to the Lord Protector immediately—”

“Him too, but the Empress—”

“—in a safe-room, Doctor—”

“Nonsense, she must hear—”

“—how did you know to come so quickly?”

“Are you deaf or stupid, man? We must see the Empress!”

“No one sees her—sir, how did you hear of the attack?”

“Attack? What attack?”

“Sir—”

“We are here to see the Empress, not waste time—”

“—must insist you explain—”

“The plague!” shrieked Joplin, silencing them both. “We've come because of the plague!”

The guards drew back from the two notorious philosophers almost as one. Dread settled thick in the air.

Sokolov threw up his hands, whether at the guards or at his colleague or both, and roared, “Don't just stand there gawping. Show us to the Empress! We've got the fucking cure!”

In the commotion that followed, no one else took note of the scream of a crow at night: a shriek of sorrow, triumph, and joy.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's still one piece of the puzzle he'd missed.

“_...__and though I do not desire to interfere with the Abbey, I must and will insist upon the rule of law. Those of the Abbey who participated in this attack will be prosecuted in secular courts, and the Abbey shall remain under interdict until it is capable once more of governing its members and preventing senseless extremism...”_

The Empress' speech the next morning was listened to with rapt attention, but few paid much heed to any mention of the Abbey. The populace fixated upon her opening words: a cure had been found. Those quarantined in state hospitals would be the first to receive it. Distribution to the still healthy population would roll out as fast as possible; in the meantime, all citizens were encouraged to drink their allotted rations of elixir and practice good hygiene. That last meant there were plenty of gloves and masks in evidence as citizens took to the streets to celebrate, but it did not seem to dampen any spirits.

Daud had taken a stolen dose of the cure already, and refused to spend any further time wondering if he actually needed it. For once, this was a mystery he would prefer to leave unsolved.

The Watch, under the direction of Geoff's second-in-command, had barricaded the streets to Holger Square that morning, and the navy had moved ships to blockade the cliff access. Daud still couldn't get anyone inside, but the Abbey would run out of food eventually, especially as every stray Overseer found in the city was being firmly sent home. When they did manage to appoint a new High Overseer, he would have to treat with the Empress in the knowledge that she could afford to keep the siege up indefinitely, and he couldn't.

Daud had not slept, although he found that the curative acted nearly as a sedative, fogging his brain. But there was too much to do to pull this off—this wasn't Rulfio's meticulous frame-job of the Admiralty, everything was last-minute and there was evidence to plant, witnesses to confuse, judges to bribe, confessions to extract. Emily was going to have to do something about her legal system, if she was serious about her bent for justice, but for now it worked in their favour.

A cure had been found. The common people would support their Empress in anything, at the moment—even against the Abbey. And every day that went by with the Overseers unable to preach, their power eroded further.

Estermont _had_ died, a development Thomas hadn't been able to immediately account for, as none of the Whalers had been able to watch him directly with the music-box playing. It was one of Estermont's cronies who provided the explanation, weeping all the while, and not from any ill-treatment by his interrogator: “He was so drunk, he could barely stand—we gave him extra doses of the damn brew, but it wouldn't sober him up—I gave him the glass—damn her—I swear I didn't know—it was that blindfolded bitch, she was there the whole time, fucking self-righteous—if only I'd known! She poisoned him! The fucking Abbey—they can't do that to _us!_”

It was, admittedly, much easier to manipulate witnesses who were already inebriated.

Estermont was not the only casualty; one of his friends had also taken a double-dose of the homemade, likely useless concoction they'd been trying to use to sober up. He'd died in the night. One of the Overseers died of complications due to head trauma. Everyone else would recover. Corvo, in particular, was already up and about, which might have been awkward to explain if anyone had actually managed to catch sight of him.

As far as that went, the best that Daud could do was double-check that Corvo wasn't in the room when he was finally called to account. Instead, there was only Waverly—and a very displeased Empress.

“Every time you frame someone, it makes my rule less legitimate. You won't do it again.” Emily glared. “You shouldn't have done it at all without telling me.”

Time had been short—but. But.

Daud accepted the criticism in silence.

“You won't do it again,” Emily repeated, and this time she included Waverly in her glare. “I don't care if it's the 'only way', find another. If my enemies are so awful we'll consider framing them, then they have to be doing something real we can catch them at.”

Waverly looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. What had the Empress caught _her_ at? And how? Surely not Corvo, not now. A question for another day. Today, Daud kept his head bowed and his mouth shut. This would limit his options in future—so be it. He'd been the one to limit all their options, months ago, when he'd killed the Empress and allowed Burrows to grab power unchecked.

“But thank you,” Emily added grudgingly. “For saving Corvo.”

Three of the Overseers confessed to planning the poisoning, detailing a plot full of mystical nonsense. Two later recanted. The third hung himself in his cell. Daud instituted a password system among the Whalers who couldn't used Void-gaze, and dourly considered how very dangerous to the empire it was for Corvo to remain in disfavour with his Empress.

He did, at last, manage to tear free enough time for an audience with the former Royal Mason.

Gerald Meeks had been fired by the Lord Regent for refusing to implement a number of the changes Burrows wanted made to the Tower in the weeks after Jessamine's death. When his savings had run out, it was the usual story—a family dispossessed, homelessness, illness. He had been in one of Emily's hospitals for the last week, before the announcement of the cure, and there was scarring around his eyes, but he could still see.

He brought his one surviving daughter with him when he came to inspect the Empress' tomb. She stayed put where he directed her, movements both obedient and listless. Her eyes were bandaged over.

“This is the original mortar,” said Meeks, running a finger along the setting. “Filled it myself... look, the crenellation here—this is mine.” He fit his fingers against it as if to demonstrate. “You can set Her Majesty's mind at ease, sir. No one's disturbed her mother's rest.”

“Could someone have tunnelled up from below?” Daud asked, thinking of rat-sized tunnels.

“It's solid rock,” Meeks said, sounding dubious, but he dutifully inspected the rest of the gazebo and the whole area around it. There were plenty of signs of disturbance, from Burrows' desperate security measures and their later removal.

Daud sighed to himself and sent for Sokolov.

It was Joplin who showed up, looking rather frazzled, clutching a bag in his hands. “I apologize on Anton's behalf, he's feeling very poorly today... actually, I think he may still be drunk. In any case, let me be of assistance. What do you require?”

“An autopsy,” said Daud. He turned to Meeks. “Open it up.”

“Sir, that is surely disrespectful,” Meeks said stiffly.

“Proceed with as much due care as you can. The Empress requires it. Certain documents we've discovered...” he hinted, and Meeks looked appropriately outraged.

In the end, opening the tomb required conscripting a number of Whalers as apprentice masons. They removed the main slab and extricated the metal coffin, and then Daud sent all of them away, leaving him alone with Joplin as the natural philosopher bent over the Empress' remains.

“Oh, hmm,” muttered Joplin, setting out his tools. “Advanced decay will of course make results less certain...”

A flutter of wings. _I remember him._ Daud looked over to see to crow settle on the cliffside wall. _He knelt over... the body with blank eyes, and plucked out her heart. That was me, wasn't it?_

Daud jerked back around to stare at Joplin.

“The heart is missing,” the philosopher said, baffled, oblivious. “Why on earth? It was a simple stab wound. Who did the original autopsy? Anton must have, but even he wouldn't dare... no, these cuts were more recent. Long after death. But why...”

“Why does the Outsider do anything,” Daud bit out. “Close it. We're done. You speak of this to no one.”

There was one person he needed to speak to before confirming anything for the Empress. Damn it. Damn it, he needed to be _certain_, he'd worked too much off of guesswork already and now, almost too late, he was discovering that one of his very first assumptions had been wrong. Perhaps it made no difference to the crow now, but it would make an ocean of difference to the Empress, and he'd given her a faulty analysis, damn it. Damn the Outsider, damn his own assumptions—damn Corvo for not being sane enough to provide any evidence _against _those assumptions. Except that Daud couldn't damn him for that anymore, because he _hadn't_ done it to himself.

It was the Great Leviathan, the black-eyed bastard sitting at the centre of the all-consuming Void, winding up His toys and watching them go _tick, tick, tick. _

He nursed his absurdly wounded pride for most of the afternoon. By the time one of his Whalers located Corvo—on top of Kaldwin's Bridge, of fucking course—the sun was setting. Daud reached the top of the span to see Corvo sitting with his feet over the side, watching a flock of crows play and chase each other over the water. One was significantly larger than the rest.

“Have you ever possessed Piero Joplin?” Daud asked, by way of greeting.

Corvo twisted to look at him, and it was almost odd to see him wearing an actual expression: confusion, in this case.

“He cut out the heart from Empress Jessamine's chest,” Daud said, sitting down beside him. Let Corvo push him off the edge if he would. Death would come sooner or later. “But it wasn't him.”

Corvo's reply was a long, slow exhale. Then, actual words: “No. The Outsider.”

_I was not alive. Nor had I been given the gift of death. _The crow fluttered down to land upon the beams a few yards away. Corvo stared at her with muted grief and longing.

“I couldn't leave her like that,” he said, barely audible over the wind, even though it had died as soon as he spoke. He didn't look like a man certain he'd made the right choice.

_Happy moments are few are far between, but they can be found. That is... more than there was, before. That was emptiness. Endless cold. _

It was clear from his expression that Corvo could not hear her.

“This is better,” Daud relayed reluctantly. “She says.”

Corvo's stare jerked around to focus on him. “You...”

“I thought you'd taken the heart yourself.”

Confusion—then Corvo recoiled, grimacing in offence.

“Not an unreasonable conclusion, I think, given that you've been _eating people_.”

The grimace turned more general, and Corvo slumped. After a moment, he said, “You completed the ritual.”

It was Daud's turn to be silent and grimacing. Corvo's earlier explanation still held: _I couldn't leave her like that._ Was this what love was, a debt that could never be paid? He considered and discarded the notion. But perhaps they were two like obsessions.

“I am sorry. About Rulfio,” Corvo said quietly.

And what good did that do? “Were you planning on continuing the habit?” Daud made the words acidic, but it was a genuine question. That particular use should be redundant to Sokolov and Joplin's cure—but doubtless other spells and rites existed that might require such a profane act. Worship of the Outsider was not given to moderation; neither was witchcraft. Corvo was silent for long enough that Daud began to fear the answer was _yes_.

Then, grudging, Corvo said, “It was never planned.”

Wonderful.

“And the rats?” Enough of those could yet devour the city by teeth alone.

Silence. Corvo was staring out at the playing crows, again, but his eyes were unseeing. The conversation seemed almost to be costing him something physical: he looked smaller, all that lethal focus directed inward.

Daud reached out and grabbed his arm. He made his grip hard enough to bruise—or hard enough to drag Corvo with him if Corvo tried to pitch him off the edge, but that didn't happen. “Corvo. The rats, yes or no.”

“I've stopped,” Corvo said dully.

Hmm. Daud had seen men turn away from the Outsider before, though rarely: and they'd turned toward the Abbey, not abnegating their zeal for the mystical but simply re-directing it. He'd never seen someone come back from the kind of insanity that runes and bone-charms engendered in the less-inured. When he'd looked down at his own hands and realized they were covered in the blood of an Empire, perhaps that had been like waking up from madness... but there was no death-masked spectre waiting for _Corvo_. Was suicide-by-philosopher his attempted substitution?

It was not one that the Empress would appreciate. “The Empress will want you back at her side, once I inform her of who actually stole her mother's heart.” And apologized abjectly, damn it, but the real trick there was going to be keeping her from challenging a capricious god, _again_. Make a habit of that, and the Outsider might eventually notice. Especially with the company she kept. “...She's a child.”

“Yes.”

Daud frowned. A whole extra word, given freely; Corvo thought this point important. A child... naive, easily forgiving. Easily endangered. Corvo could have been in his Empress' shadow through every moment of her edict, and she would never have known. Instead here he was, sitting at the top of Kaldwin's Bridge. He'd been avoiding her almost entirely since—since he'd put Jessamine's heart in a crow, and Daud had dragged him away from it.

Twenty-four hours later, he'd come to save Daud from Granny Rags. Little enough time for a man high on the Void to begin to come back to earth... and realize that he'd turned into a plague-rat-summoning cannibal. But perhaps _just _enough.

The only time since that Corvo had come near Emily was at the party, when she'd been protected by dozens of the Tower Guard, Daud's Whalers, and Daud himself; and under direct threat from Abbey forces. The latter, too great a threat to leave to others. The former... a great enough threat to defend against even his own madness? No, Daud had not misjudged his devotion at all.

_For fifteen years, he haunted my steps,_ cawed the crow. _We have reversed roles, now, but I am yet as helpless to protect him as he was me. _

Eh. Melodrama. “You're going to have to make a decision, then.” He tapped his finger against the metal of the bridge. “She's forbidden you to leave her service.”

Corvo looked at him sideways.

Daud scowled. “I'm out of the business of assassinations. Also by Her Majesty's command.” Outsider's Eyes, was this why he hadn't said anything about the damned poison?

For some reason this made one corner of Corvo's mouth quirk up. It was an utterly humourless expression. “So you are. Royal Spymaster.” He shook his head, and looked out at the crows again—held up his left hand, wrist bent down, fingers crooked. Light glimmered about it, then about _him_, and Daud's vision doubled, the man overtop of a crow, or the other way around—and then he was not there at all. Daud blinked the Void into his own eyes, and saw, far out over the water, the cloud surrounding one of the black birds that wheeled and turned, breaking off from its fellows and winging away upward.

With a great flapping of wings, the massive crow launched herself from the bridge and glided to join him. Her wingspan was easily twice his; he flew into her shadow and stayed there, spiralling after her in their own private dance.

Daud turned away and began to make his way back down the bridge. Let them have what remained to them. It was little enough.

Perhaps it might even be sufficient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! I would love to write more in this universe, but I just don't have a coherent plot or anything that's coming together right now. So there it ends, and I hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit welcome.


End file.
